

'^. "^T^P^-o /^t-^ 



J. L. D. 

I. 

I REST my eyes upon these features traced 
With skilful hand, and aid of subtle art, 

And all the charms his living presence graced 
Come thronging to my over-burdened heart. 

The kindling eye where wit his bow did bend, — 
The face all radiant with the soul within, — 
How fraught with joy the fleeting hours have been, 

When to the flowing thought, his voice did lend 
Its winning charm ! 'T is memory sweet with pain, 
As I live o'er those happy hours again ! 

From youth to manhood's prime, he was my friend, — 
My soul is grateful for that blessing given. 
And parting now, before the gate of heaven, 

O God ! I bow to what Thy will doth send. 



II. 

He was my friend. Before the closed door 
I stand, slow to believe that I no more 

Shall press his hand. The days drag on to years, 
With added sense of loss, and pain in store, 

And grief doth overflow in bitter tears. 
While steadfast Faith her loving comfort gives : 

The converse sweet with him who is not here, 

Is not a memory dead upon his bier, 
But in the life beyond most surely lives. 

I do not only say, " he was my friend," 

But looking calmly forward to the end, 
When I shall also pass the opening door, 
And grasp his hand with joy unknown before, 

I wait in faith, and say, " he is my friend." 



PREFACE. Vii 

one, entitled "The Kingdom of Heaven and the 
Kingdom of Nature," is published as the complement 
to his volume on Theism. It was the last sermon 
he wrote, its aim being to show that " the concep- 
tions which give to modern science its character- 
istic tone are conceptions in striking analogy with 
the deeper teachings of the gospel." 

Some may miss from the volume articles which 
had equal literary claim to a place there, which, for 
want of room only, have been omitted. The aim 
has been to preserve in a connected form, and by 
a discriminating selection, what will best recall to 
memory the comprehensive and accurate scholar- 
ship, the choice thought, the earnest and lofty spirit 
of Professor Diman. The only changes made, have 
been in the nature of verbal correction, slight as 
well as few and far between. The portrait is from 
a plate etched by the skilful hand of Mrs. Anna 
Lea Merritt, whose name will be recognized as that 
of an accomplished American artist now residing in 
London, and whose personal acquaintance with" Pro- 
fessor Diman lent enthusiasm to the cunning of her 
pencil in the attempt to reproduce that speaking 
face. The sonnets which accompany the portrait 
have been contributed by one of his life-long friends, 
Rowland Hazard, of Peace Dale, Rhode Island. 

It is hoped that the wide circle of admirers and 



viri PREFACE. 

friends, who knew him so well and loved him so 
deeply, will find in the book a picture of the man as 
scholar, teacher, and citizen which they will delight 
to recall. To that innermost circle, so centred in 
him, so blessed in its heritage of past communings, 
dating from college-days, when 

" We were nursed upon the self-same hill," 

a circle now broken, the volume will be a cherished 
reminder of golden hours gone by, alas ! forever. 

James O. Murray. 

Princeton, New Jersey, 
October 19, i88i. 



CONTENTS. 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 
J. Lewis Diman. page 

Delivered at the Request of the Faculty of Brown Univer- 
sity, in the First Baptist Meeting-House, May 17, 1881, by 
the Rev. James O. Murray, D. D I 

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES. 

The Alienation of the Educated Class from Politics. 
An Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cam- 
bridge, June 29, 1876 41 

The Method of Academic Culture. 

An Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Am- 
herst College, July 6, 1869 ; . . . . 76 

Address. 

At the Unveiling of the Monument to Roger Williams in 

the City of Providence, October 16, 1877 108 

The Settlement of Mount Hope. 

An Address at the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Set- 
tlement of the Town of Bristol, R. I., delivered September 
24, 1880 139 

Sir Henry Vane. 

An Historical Address delivered before the Long Island 
Historical Society, Brooklyn, March 26, 1878 168 



X CONTENTS. 

REVIEWS. 

PAGB 

Religion in America, 1776-1876 . 201 

University Corporations »._.... 265 

SERMONS. 

The Son of Man 299 

Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life 311 

Christ, the Bread of Life 328 

Christ in the Power of his Resurrection 344 

The Holy Spirit, the Guide to Truth 360 

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost 378 

The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Nature 397 



COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE, 

DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE FACULTY OF 

BROWN UNIVERSITY, IN THE FIRST BAPTIST 

MEETING-HOUSE, MAY 17, 1881, 

BY 

THE REV. JAMES O. MURRAY, D. D. 



J. LEWIS DIMAN. 

A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE, BY THE REV. 
JAMES O. MURRAY, D. D. 



As I rise to fulfill this sacred and responsible 
duty, I recall with mournful distinctness the simi- 
lar service rendered by Professor Diman when the 
university was so deeply bereft in the loss of Pro- 
fessor Dunn. Both were stricken down by the same 
mortal disease, and vanished from our sight with 
startling suddenness. Both were " dead ere their 
prime," and the opening words of that beautiful ad- 
dress have now a double impressiveness. " We 
bring to these services," Professor Diman then said, 
" a bitter sorrow. There have been others taken 
from us whose names were indissolubly connected 
with our history ; but they had long relinquished 
the active labors of instruction, or crowned with 
years had come to the grave in the calm decay of 
their autumnal season. For the first time [alas ! it 
is no longer the first] one of our immediate number 
has been removed ; one who had hardly reached the 
bright summer of his career ; whose auspicious prime 
held out the flattering promise that his past inesti- 
mable years were only the pledge of a still ampler 
usefulness." 

How aptly did these words, as an unconscious 



4 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

prophecy, anticipate his own career. Of whom 
could it more truly or with sadder pathos be said 
that " his past inestimable years were only the pledge 
of a still ampler usefulness." We cannot bury such 
a man in utter silence. We are moved to such 
commemoration as this service contemplates by all 
the better instincts of our nature. Aside from the 
fact that it fastens thought on what is admirable in 
character and achievement, is it not well, while we 
can gain the ear of men, to lift high and clear be- 
fore the community the ineffable superiority of the 
calling which, while relinquishing the glittering 
prizes of life, seeks and finds in the pursuit of truth, 
in the vocation of the Christian scholar, in the noble 
offices of the teacher, the end and the reward of 
living t For some men, indeed, the obligation to 
institute such a commemoration has peculiar force. 
If the work of life has been so fully wrought out as 
to have expressed itself in something by its own 
nature monumental, a great discovery, an illustrious 
public service, an immortal book which gathers up 
into itself the personality, suggesting and consecrat- 
ing the fame, perhaps there were less need of the 
commemorating word. But when the life of a rare 
and well furnished scholar has been rnainly prepara- 
tion, when the fruits of scholarship lie scattered 
here and there like sheaves on a harvest field, and 
need to be gathered up ; when, unless this is at- 
tempted, that career will seem fragmentary, incom- 
plete, which else would show symmetry and fullness, 
then the duty is unquestionable. 

Nor is this occasion simply academic. How wide- 
spreading are the interests, any worthy commem- 
oration of Professor Diman should be fashioned to 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 5 

meet ! If our university is chief mourner, let us not 
forget that in the grief which passing months have 
made only sorer, the city, nay the State itself, nay 
the brotherhood of American sholarship, are, if si- 
lent, yet bowed participants. The life and work of 
Professor Diman touched the life of the community 
where he lived at so many points, nay had flung 
their attractive influences into so many other aca- 
demic centres, that the occasion to-day can be rightly 
viewed only as the expression of a grief uncommon 
for the breadth of its sphere as well as the depth of 
its sources. 

Jeremiah Lewis Diman was born in Bristol, R. I., 
May I, 183 1. There his boyhood was passed. He 
grew up an ingenuous, pure, attractive lad, fond of 
out-door sports, yet not excelling in them nor in 
studies. He was happily destitute of everything 
like precocity — precocious sainthood or precocious 
intelligence. His father. Governor Byron Diman, 
was a man of decided literary taste — a diligent 
reader of good books, especially of history, " well 
versed in New England history, and the history of 
the mother country," possessing also, it is said, a 
" very exact knowledge of English politics." Those 
who have shared his genial hospitality will readily 
recall that open fire with its blazing logs, and the 
discussions which went on there concerning history, 
or literature, or politics, in which his son Lewis 
was always a ready and eager listener or disputant. 
In the dedicatory address at the opening of the 
Rogers Free Library, Professor Diman, alluding to 
the townsman whose name the library bears, said : 
" Among the most cherished impressions of my own 
boyhood was that left by my intercourse with one 



6 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

whose acquaintance with the important movements 
of his time was so extensive and minute, and whose 
conversation was always so instructive and so in- 
cisive. I acknowledge with gratitude the vigorous 
intellectual impulse which, as a youth, I derived 
from his society." It was, in fact, a marked char- 
acteristic of his boyhood — this susceptibility to in- 
tellectual impulse from older persons. And, as in- 
dicating the bent in him for the later studies in 
which he distinguished himself, it should be stated 
that during his boyhood he contributed a series of 
papers to the village journal on matters of local his- 
tory, gathering his material by conversation with the 
old inhabitants, or by industrious search of the town 
records. 

He was prepared for college by the Rev. James 
N. Sykes, and entered Brown University at Com- 
mencement, 1847. His career in college was marked 
by steady growth of intellectual power rather than 
by extraordinary brilliancy of scholarship. He en- 
joyed classical studies — developed some aptitude in 
them, but when the later years of the curriculum 
were reached, it was evident that in literary or his- 
torical and philosophical pursuits his tastes and abil- 
ities would, in after life, assert themselves. The 
literary societies then existing, unhappily now ex- 
tinct, afforded opportunity for cultivating power in 
debate. He was a very active member of the United 
Brothers, and there much of his fine gift in extem- 
poraneous speech was brought out. In short, it 
may be said, the course of study, the instructors 
who filled the several chairs, the whole spirit of 
the college, were such as to bring out in him the 
best elements of his intellectual nature. His train- 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. J 

ing here was a genuine educing of native powers, 
singularly rich. He always gratefully acknowledged 
this indebtedness to his teachers, deeming no man 
himself fit to teach who does not duly appreciate his 
debt to early instructors. He was graduated in the 
year 185 1, pronouncing at Commencement the class- 
ical oration. It might have been difficult, at the 
close of his college course, to predict that for which 
he had the greatest gift, literature or history. But 
he did not graduate without leaving behind him the 
distinct impression that to whichever sphere he be- 
took himself he would bring honor. 

During his college course he became a member 
of the Congregational Church in Bristol, and chose 
the Christian ministry as his vocation in life. There 
is one passage in his fine notice of Dr. Wayland, 
pubHshed in the "Atlantic Monthly "for January, 
1868, which must be a chapter from his own expe- 
rience : — 

" In the most difficult task of dealing with young men 
at the crisis of their spiritual history, Dr. Wayland was 
unsurpassed. How wise and tender his counsels at such 
a time ! How many who have timidly stolen to his study 
door, their souls burdened with strange thoughts and be- 
wildered with unaccustomed questionings, remember with 
what instant appreciation of their errand the green shade 
was lifted from the eye, the volume thrown aside, and 
with what genuine hearty interest that whole countenance 
would beam. At such an interview he would often read 
the parable of the returning prodigal, and who that heard 
can ever forget the pathos with which he would dwell 
upon the words." 

The religious life thus begun was through all sub- 
sequent years a moulding force in his character and 



8 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

work. He was reserved by nature, and about his 
Christian life this natural reserve asserted itself per- 
haps too strongly. But those who were on any 
footing of intimacy with him knew what spiritual 
forces his faith in Christ was constantly exerting on 
his nature, and how genuine and simple-hearted that 
religious life was. 

Wisely, he determined to spend a year in general 
study before entering on professional studies in An- 
dover. The year 1851-52 was accordingly spent 
with the Rev. Dr. Thayer, in Newport, R. I. Un- 
der his superintendence, studies in the History of 
Philosophy, Theology, and the Classics, were pur- 
sued. It was a year of fertility in his intellectual 
development. When at its close he became a mem- 
ber of the Junior Class in Andover Theological 
Seminary, it was evident that the quiet earnestness 
which had marked his college course had been deep- 
ened, and that in mental work he had been gaining 
breadth, as well as high stimulus. After spending 
two years in the Theological Seminary at Andover, 
he decided to pursue a course of study in German 
Universities, and went abroad for this purpose in 
August, 1854. At Halle, he studied Philosophy, 
chiefly Kant, attending lectures on the History of 
Philosophy, Dogmatik, Encyclopedic, and Old Tes- 
tament — coming under the influence of such teach- 
ers as Erdmann, Julius Muller, Tholuck, and Rod- 
iger. He went much among the Professors socially, 
was ever a welcome visitor at their houses. The 
spring vacation was passed in Munich, studying art, 
and the summer semester at Heidelberg. Here his 
studies were divided between Rothe, on Dogmatik 
and Ethics, and the philosophy of Fichte and Schel- 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 9 

ling. But what perhaps, marked most decisively this 
portion of his residence abroad, was his acquaintance 
and intercourse with Baron Bunsen at Charlotten- 
berg, whither the great scholar and diplomatist 
had returned from the Court of St. James. Pro- 
fessor Diman was a frequent and delighted visitor 
at Baron Bunsen's villa, and in ''its terraced and 
well-shaded garden " on many a pleasant sum^mer 
afternoon he spent his time in conversation with 
Bunsen. Memorable hours they must have been, 
which left impressions like these upon this favorite 
and favored young student. Of these conversations 
he says himself : " The fire and eloquence with 
which he would enter at once on some chance topic 
suggested by a visitor, some question, perhaps, of 
Biblical interpretation or ecclesiastical antiquities, 
the boundless erudition with which he would illus- 
trate his arguments, the facility with which he 
would quote the various readings of some disputed 
text, the earnestness with which he would contro- 
vert any opposing views, rendered intercourse with 
him as delightful as it was instructive." What 
seems to have kindled Professor Diman's warmest 
admiration for Bunsen was the latter's cherished 
view that " all history is instinct with a divine pres- 
ence, and faith in the possibility of demonstratin'g a 
speculative basis for the soul's intuitive perceptions, 
the inspiring motive of his profoundest study." In 
that eloquent tribute to him in the discourse on 
the " Historical Basis of Belief," specially in refer- 
ence to Bunsen's work, " God in History," Professor 
Diman remarks that he showed " all the striking ex- 
cellences and all the striking defects of German 
thought; but the most marked thing, after all, about 



10 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

him was the manner in which his daring speculation 
was tempered by his historic spirit." And when 
we read such words it is impossible to avoid the 
conclusion that those delightful summer afternoons 
in the garden at Charlottenberg, the Neckar flow- 
ing at his feet, the fine old castle crowning the 
heights across the river and in full view, had no in- 
decisive influence in shaping the future career of 
Professor Diman as a historical student and teacher. 
His studies in German Universities were completed 
at Berlin. There he pursued a course in the Hege- 
lian Philosophy. Besides hearing lectures from 
Nitsch on Old Testament Theology, from Twesten 
on Dogmatic, from Trendelenburg on Psychology and 
Logic, he continued his art-studies. From this sur- 
vey it will be seen how broad and how rich was the 
culture he sought in foreign universities. Return- 
ing home in the spring of 1856, he again resumed 
his studies at Andover, was graduated from that 
Theological Seminary in the ensuing summer, and 
licensed to preach by the Essex South Association 
at Salem, Mass. He at once drew attention as a 
preacher. His fine presence, his attractive speech, 
his simple, clear, choice style, his fresh treatment of 
pulpit themes, his fondness for the more spiritual 
elements of pulpit teaching, made him a preacher 
sought after from the outset. At this juncture of 
his life a great sorrow overwhelmed him. It was a 
bereavement which suddenly dashed the hopes and 
loves of years. The sacred grief was borne by him 
silently, submissively, manfully. While its shadows 
were upon him, he received a call to the First Con- 
gregational Church in Fall River, Mass. This call 
was accepted, and there he was ordained and in- 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. II 

Stalled in the autumn of 1856. This ministry to a 
united and devoted people continued until February, 
i860, when he received and accepted a call to the 
Harvard Congregational Church, Brookline, Mass. 
In the spring of that year he was united in marriage 
with Miss Emma Stimson, of Providence, and that 
home was begun, which, during all these years, has 
been to him such a joy and rest, and, to those who 
have known its hospitality, so attractive. At Brook- 
line, Mass., he labored for four years, until the spring 
of 1864, when he resigned his pastoral charge to ac- 
cept the chair of History and Political Economy in 
Brown University. His call here took him by sur- 
prise. He had devoted himself to the work of the 
Christian ministry, and while he was a pastor, was 
a pastor with his whole heart. He loved, as he 
reverenced, his calling. The old-fashioned New 
England clergy were men for whom he had a special 
veneration. *'Who," he said in his Phi Beta Kappa 
address at Harvard College, " but looks back with 
veneration to the New England ministers of the 
olden time, like Ward, of Ipswich, whose vigorous 
and well furnished intellect could turn from the 
composition of sermons to the drawing up of a 
* Body of Liberties ; ' like many of a later day, who, 
in the genuine tradition of the fathers, refused to 
call any human duties common or unclean." What 
mainly drew him to these ministers in so apprecia- 
tive admiration, was the way in which they always" 
" magnified their office." He gave himself wholly 
to his work. All his study — all his writing we-re 
in its direct line. It was no service divided be- 
tween literature and the altar at which he served. 
"The thing he had nothing to do with he did ncth- 



12 A COMMEMORATIVE BIS COURSE. 

ing with," as Carlyle finely says of his father. Still, 
in his ministry, as in everything else, he had his 
own views as to parish work and pulpit teaching, 
which were in some respects at war with the ac- 
cepted views about him. What he believed in, and 
what he used, as the ''means of grace," were the 
word of God and the sacraments. He distrusted 
" revivals " as an agency or method of church life, 
through reliance on and use of which the church is 
to grow. He was convinced that some modern ex- 
pedients for making religion attractive to the masses 
ended in vulgarizing religion. He turned with aver- 
sion from a travesty of sacred hymnology, which has 
usurped the place of the fine, strong, genuine old 
Christian lyrics, sung by saints of all ages and com- 
munions. It is quite possible that he failed in doing 
justice to some aspects of modern Christian effort. 
But within the circle of parish duty, as he defined 
it to himself, he certainly fulfilled a noble ministry. 
Sympathetic and tender in sorrow, patient and wise 
with the troubled and the doubting, firm and search- 
ing with the wandering, attractive to children, his 
memory as a Christian pastor is still warmly cherished 
in both parishes he served. Toward what is called 
" pulpit oratory" he never aspired. Preaching with 
him meant teaching. He paid his hearers the tribute 
of believing that they came to be instructed^' in things 
pertaining to the kingdom of God." As a preacher 
to thoughtful, cultivated persons he was exception- 
ally gifted. His discourse was always positive in the 
direction his thoughts took. His unaffected, digni- 
fied manner, his sin:^ple, lucid, always fresh, presen- 
tation of the truth, the large infusion of what may 
be called the element of a personal and living Christ, 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 1 3 

into his sermons, his deeply reverential, yet rich, de- 
votions made him welcome in the pulpits of this 
city and other cities. The one truth of Christianity 
which he emphasized more than any other was that 
view of Christ as the life of men — which is found 
eminently in St. John and also in St. Paul, and 
which appealed to Professor Diman on its mystical 
as well as its positive side. He regarded as the 
truly practical sermon — not simply that which in- 
culcates some moral obligation or religious duty, 
but, far more, the principles of Christianity so un- 
folded as to bring into the common daily life of men 
and women the sanctifying influences of the truth 
as it is in Jesus. Most of the sermons he wrote are 
cast in this mould. They are in many respects like 
the parish sermons of Augustus Hare, or those of 
Newman, alike not less in the singular purity and 
finish of the style than in their manner of discuss- 
ing religious themes. Anything like a formal out- 
line of Professor Diman's theological views will not 
on this occasion be expected from me. He had an 
intense dislike for the glib use of phrases used too 
often as the catch-words of orthodoxy. But that 
his sympathies were with the historical faith of the 
church is undoubtedly true. He loved to quote 
Bishop Ken's last words, '' I die in the faith of the 
Catholic Church before its division into east and 
west." I may be pardoned for quoting at some length 
a passage from his discourse on the '' Historical Basis 
of Belief," because it shows where his theological 
sympathies were placed, and also how he approached 
theology on its historical side. 

" Christianity, taken as a whole, may be justly termed 
the most historical of all religions — not in the sense 



14 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

simply that it rests on the best authenticated basis of his- 
toric fact, but for the profounder reason that only in its 
continuous and vital connection with history can it be 
completely manifested. In its true aspect it is not a fact, 
but a power ; not one event, but an increasing purpose 
that runs through the ages. This purpose is fulfilled, not 
in effecting individual redemption, but in building up a 
spiritual kingdom. The gospel swells with this imperial 
theme. Its closing chapters hail as the final consumma- 
tion the heavenly Jerusalem, with its streets of jasper and 
sapphire. While the incarnation must remain the central 
truth of Christianity, the eternal fount whence all streams 
of living waters flow, yet the full purpose for which the 
Word was made flesh cannot be understood, except in 
connection with that of which it is represented as the es- 
sential ground — the gift of the Holy Ghost. The con- 
tinued indwelling of the Divine Spirit in regenerate hu- 
manity is the living fact on which the church is built. As 
a consequence of this indwelling, the children of the true 
Israel are not simply converted individuals ; they are 
members of one Body, branches of one Vine. It is their 
ineffable calling to be built up a spiritual temple, all the 
parts of which, fashioned by Wisdom herself, shall be fitly 
framed together. This organic oneness of spiritual life, 
this corporate identity of the new creation, is implied in 
all apostolic teaching. It is the inexorable condition of 
sound spiritual growth. The last prayer of our Lord for 
his disciples, foreboding, from the darkness of his most 
bitter anguish, the dark future of the church which he pur- 
chased with his own blood, was that they might be one 
in that transcendent sense in which He was one with the 
Father. The emphasis with which these words were 
charged makes it impossible for language to overstate 
the organic nature of spiritual life ; for what more sub- 
stantial unity can be conceived than that of the Father 
and Son .? " 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 1 5 

In the spring of 1864, as I have said, Professor Di- 
man was invited to succeed Professor Gammell in the 
chair of History and Political Economy. He was its 
first occupant, and had filled it with so signal a suc- 
cess that his resignation caused the deepest regret 
to all friends of the University. He nominated as 
his successor Professor Diman, whose rare abilities 
and aptness for such a post he had discovered while 
a student under him. And though the call here was 
promptly accepted, yet it was a genuine and hearty 
grief to Professor Diman to give, up the position of 
religious teacher and pastor. He entered on his work 
in the college in the autumn of 1864. While it was at 
once evident that he would make a successful teacher 
in the department of History, yet the brilliant suc- 
cess of his later years was the product of severe and 
unremitting study. His laborious years in German 
universities laid its foundation. His ideal was high, 
his acquaintance with modern historical scholarship 
full, and he brought to his work mental capabilities 
and endowments for historical study. He entered 
with all his heart into that deeper and truer concep- 
tion of history which has found voice in the preface 
to Greene's "Short History of the English People." 
He never sunk his idea of historical development 
into a ''drum and trumpet history." He recognized 
the truth, and it shaped all his historical teaching, 
that '' war after all has played a small part in the 
real story of European nations, and in that of Eng- 
land a smaller part than in any other." He delighted 
to find in art and architecture and literature, if not 
the highest, yet real exponents of national greatness. 
Here his art-studies in Munich and Berlin were of 
excellent service to him. He made the history of 



1 6 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

the past vital with undying interest. He lighted it 
up with every humane and choice culture. Above 
all, he recognized in it a Divine order ; he held that 
Jonathan Edwards, in his " History of Redemption," 
had struck out the true path in all deepest historical 
investigation. ''Revelation," he said in his address 
at Amherst, ''has given history a meaning which not 
even Thucydides conceived. We tread the shores 
of a new world when we turn from the gloomy pages 
of Tacitus to the triumphant visions of Augustine." 
He admired Bunsen because " Bunsen zealously 
charged himself with the solution of the problem — 
that Leibnitz first proposed — of establishing the 
presence of a Divine order in the seeming conflict of 
the ages." I am indebted to Professor Gammell for 
a statement of the general plan of Professor Diman's 
historical course. 

" It began with the overthrow of the Roman Empire, 
and traced the origin and progress of the modern civiliza- 
tion, setting forth the elements and agencies of this civil- 
ization, as they were derived from the civilizations of an- 
tiquity, from the customs and institutions of the barbarian 
races that overthrew the empire, from the spirit and insti- 
tutions of the Christian church, and showing the manner 
in which they were brought together in the different parts 
of Europe, and in which they were developed into the 
institutions of modern society. ... As the great institu- 
tions of the Middle Ages assumed their definite propor- 
tions, he would treat them specifically and trace the in- 
fluence which each exerted on the progress of civilization, 
and on the fortunes of the countries which it may have 
specially controlled." 

The institutions of the English races held, how- 
ever, the foremost place in his discussions, and were 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. \J 

throughout contrasted with those of Europe. His 
thoroughness of treatment was shown in the pains 
he took to trace our modern institutions to their 
origin, and it was his delight to point out how little 
of novelty there is in the modes through which soci- 
ety is administered. During the later years of his 
professorship he had made special studies in the con- 
stitutional history of the United States, including 
the nature and peculiar characteristics of our govern- 
ment. The whole course in History was closed by 
a brief series of lectures on International Law. For 
this department of his work he had less fondness than 
for History proper. But in Political Economy his 
interest was deep, his studies thorough, and the stu- 
dents all looked forward eagerly to the Junior year, 
when they passed under his instruction in Political 
Economy, and though this study was an elective, it 
has from the first been customary for the class to 
enter that department as a body. When Professor 
Diman first entered on his professorship his instruc- 
tions were largely connected with text-books, but he 
at length threw them aside, teaching almost wholly 
by lectures. He was careful, however, not to repeat 
himself. His lectures were always reenforced and 
enriched by his latest studies. They varied from year 
to year, and the fault of monotony or dullness was 
never from the outset laid to his charge. A success- 
ful professorship of History must, beside aptness in 
teaching, at least embody the following elements : 
careful and exhaustive investigation of sources, the 
power of sound generalization, and facility in group- 
ing and classifying events. In each of these Profes- 
sor Diman attained high success. From close and 
full investigations he made his generalizations. He 



1 8 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

was in the opposition, by the bent of his mind. Pre- 
conceived opinions went for httle, perhaps for too 
little, with him. But his generalizations were never 
hasty nor yet crude, and they were always honest 
as they were always fearless. And in what may 
be called the perspective in historical teaching he 
showed excellent judgment, fastening the attention 
of his students on what was really prominent, deter- 
mining, and lasting in all historic movements. The 
longer he taught the more he grew inclined to the 
detailed study of great men, as well as great events. 
The men were the real events. What Dean Stanley 
has said of this characteristic as applied to the his- 
tory of church doctrine, applies with full force to 
the sphere of secular history : " Look at Augustini- 
anism as it arose in the mind of Augustine ; at Lu- 
theranism as it was conceived by Luther ; at Wesley- 
anism as it was set forth by Wesley, It will cease 
to be a phantom, it will speak to us as a man ; if it 
is an enemy we shall slay it more easily ; if a friend 
we shall embrace it more warmly." 

In the class-room Professor Diman had some 
unique qualities as a lecturer. He had rare gifts 
in inspiring enthusiasm for historical study among 
his pupils, partly by the influence of his own 
thorough and attractive culture, still, more by his 
method of dealing with subjects. "I share to the 
full," he said in his Phi Beta Kappa address at 
Amherst College, " Lessing's contempt for what he 
calls professoring. Unless mind touches mind 
there will be no heat. We make much of our im- 
proved methods and text-books ; but after all they 
matter less than we suppose. A genial, opulent, 
overflowing soul is the secret of success in teach- 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 1 9 

ing. To have read Euripides with Milton were bet- 
ter than having the latest critical edition. Not the 
methods but the men gave Rugby and Soreze their 
fame." *'The mere matter of Professor Diman's 
lectures," writes one of his pupils to me, " excellent 
as they were in comprehension of the subjects, ac- 
curacy of analysis and clearness of statement, I 
would not place beside his first three bounties to 
the student of history, interest in the subject, intro- 
duction to the material, and acquaintance with the 
method." 

Joined with this was a happy gift of illustration. 
In History, by pithy anecdote ; in Political Economy, 
by imaginary incident ; in both, by sharp contrast, 
by keen-edged criticism, he made his abstract dis- 
cussions luminous. The ease with which he did it 
all made much of its charm. His wit, so penetrat- 
ing and so bright, was here employed, sometimes 
to dangerous extremes. But his classes were al- 
ways on the alert. Their minds were electrified by 
the sharp, strong sentences which sometimes flashed 
through the lecture room. His suggestiveness as a 
teacher was yet another faculty he possessed in a 
striking degree. Whatever he treated was so han- 
dled as to open invitingly various lines for thought. 
It was his habit to unfold at length the literature of 
the subject he was discussing, and he left on his 
classes an abiding impression that the class-room 
was the beginning, not the end of the matter ; that 
the real work was to discriminate between the vary- 
ing values of serviceable authorities, "and to get 
their knowledge at first hand rather than through 
the filter of another's mind." 

It was undoubtedly the case sometimes that he 



20 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

shocked the preconceived notions of a portion of 
the students under him, as when he gave " so strik- 
ing prominence to the inconsistencies of Protestant 
belief," and in contrast exalted " Catholic doctrines 
and characters ; " yet in the end by competent testi- 
mony he left his classes always on safe ground. 
This characteristic, however colored by other ele- 
ments, had its root in that quality which PVederick 
Ozanam of the Sorbonne, from the opposite stand- 
point of Romanism, emphasized as the " being just 
to error." But a teacher can never safely forget that 
inconsiderate pupils and sometimes considerate pu- 
pils always outdo the teacher they admire. It would 
have been well, too, if the wall of reserve between 
him and his pupils could have been broken down. 
How his pupils admired him ! Nay, how profoundly 
they are grateful to him for his inestimable gifts as 
a teacher, for their hearty admiration passed onward 
into a feeling of hearty obligation, and no sincerer 
mourners in the wide circle are found to-day than 
the men whom he taught. So for seventeen years 
he filled the chair of History. It was in his hands 
a strong and attractive educating power. It gave 
honor, nay, more, it gave the most substantial worth 
to the curriculum of the university. It has left be- 
hind, living influences in developed minds, and a 
bright and stimulating memory. And the loss is sim- 
ply and sadly irreparable. Professor Diman's work 
as a teacher of history would, however, be but par- 
tially viewed, if only his labors in the professor's chair 
were considered. He filled a wider sphere. For 
ten years consecutively he gave a course of lectures 
to different circles of ladies in the city, each course 
embracing twenty lectures, and in the end covering 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 21 

a very wide and rich variety of subjects. Before 
this company of ladies he had for this season planned 
and partly finished a series of lectures on modern 
statesmen. The last, upon Canning, was given on 
January 28. In less than a week from that time 
he was in that heavenly city into which kings and 
princes of the earth " do bring their honor." It is 
fitting that this public utterance should be made of 
the profoundly grateful sense of value for this teach- 
ing felt by those to whom it was so long given. For 
thirteen years also he was a lecturer on history in 
the Friends' School, and when the Normal School 
was opened in 1871 he was connected with it as 
"lecturer and special instructor." Every year since, 
with two exceptions, he has given a course of lec- 
tures on his favorite subjects belonging to the Mid- 
dle Ages, and choosing for the last two, subjects 
connected with our own national history. His au- 
dience did not consist wholly of students, but also 
of cultivated persons outside the school interested 
in historical discussions. In the opinion of some 
he was seen here at his best as a lecturer. " As I 
recall these lectures," writes the principal, " I hardly 
know which was most admirable, the ready com- 
mand of specific facts, his wide and original gene- 
ralizations, his power to subordinate facts to general 
principles, or the grace and charm of his utterance." 
The last lectures of this (iourse, those on the " Rev- 
olutionary Period in American History " and ** The 
Constitutional History of the United States," have 
attracted the widest attention. They were prepared 
expressly for the Normal School. In them he " cor- 
related in a masterly manner the history of our own 
country with that of the several countries of western 



22 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Europe, while he traced with the clearness of a line 
of light the development and the modification of 
the fundamental principles of government." So 
marked was the success attending these courses of 
lectures that there were whisperings of a possible 
public career for Professor Diman. They drew at- 
tention to him as fitted for public life. There is, 
however, little reason to think that he, if opportu- 
nity had offered, would ever have left his favorite 
studies for political life, much as he deplored the 
alienation of educated men from politics. His own 
words, in an able and comprehensive review of Pres- 
ident Woolsey's work on International Law,^ would 
seem to settle the question : — 

" Dr. Woolsey has solved, as it seems to us, more suc- 
cessfully than any one else, the much-debated problem of 
the function of the scholar in politics. He has solved it 
not by securing for himself a seat in Congress, where the 
abilities and attainments fitted to much higher work 
might have been wasted in the mere details of practical 
legislation, . . . but in undertaking the more useful 
task of influencing public opinion, and guiding his fellow- 
countrymen to a higher and more worthy conception of 
their duties as citizens." 

In the spring of 1879, he delivered a course of 
historical lectures before the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity. He chose for his subject the "Thirty Years' 
War." When this theme.was announced, President 
Oilman writes, — 

" There was some regret that he had selected one of 
so intricate and difficult a character for an audience made 
up of very diverse elements, composed as it was both of 
students and educated gentlemen and ladies from the 

1 New Englaiider, May, 1878. 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 23 

city of Baltimore. From the beginning to the end, how- 
ever, he held the attention of his hearers in the closest 
manner. ... If he used any notes they were of the 
briefest sort. He seemed to be talking to a company of 
friends on a subject of great importance, which he per- 
fectly understood, with an unhesitating command, not 
only of names and dates, but of the exact epithets, and 
discriminating sentences which he wished to employ. 
The ease with which he lectured under circumstances 
of very considerable difficulty was only equaled by the 
instruction and pleasure which he gave the auditors, not 
being less, but more than all 

" * The gentleness he seemed to be, 

Best seemed the thing he was, and joined 
Each office of its social hour 
To noble manners as the flower 

And native growth of noble mind.' " 

It is a matter of deep regret that no report even 
of these lectures exists. They seem never to have 
been written out. They were the fruit of studies 
carried on during all the previous winter, and with 
consultation of all the latest European contributions 
to this grave period of European history. A bare 
enunciation of his method of treatment and of the 
topics discussed will show at a glance the compre- 
hensiveness with which he treated all subjects, his 
power to join together and to illustrate historical 
movements by the side-lights of such movements, in 
great contemporary characters and events : " The 
subject will be treated throughout in its general 
relation to European history, and as marking the 
transition from ecclesiastical to secular politics." 
It was made inclusive of the following topics : " The 
general causes of the struggle as connected with 
the state of Europe; the House of Austria after 



24 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

the Reformation ; the religious parties in Germany ; 
the Evangelical Union ; the revolt in Bohemia ; the 
foreign policy of James I. ; the conversion of a Bo- 
hemian into a German question ; the military sys- 
tem of Mansfield ; the Danish war ; the rise of 
Wallenstein ; the connection of Sweden with Ger- 
man politics ; the designs of Ferdinand 11. ; the 
career of Gustavus Adolphus ; the relations of Spain 
with the Empire ; the fall of Wallenstein ; the pol- 
icy of Richelieu ; the social condition of Germany 
during the late years of the war ; the peace of West- 
phalia in its relation to the Empire and the State 
system of Europe ; the general results of the strug- 
gle in their bearing upon German unity and na- 
tionality." Had his life been spared, it was his pur- 
pose to gather up and perfect his studies in a work 
on the great subject. It fascinated him not less by 
reason of the great characters it involved, than by 
the bearings he conceived it to hold upon Protes- 
tantism and Romanism. 

Some of Professor Diman's most characteristic 
and successful efforts were his occasional addresses. 
That combination of gifts is rare by which a man is 
at once the accurate and thorough student and the 
golden-mouthed speaker. But in him these gifts 
were choicely blended. These occasions were some- 
times academic, oftener civic, in their character. 
Of the former, the two most admirable are an ad- 
dress before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Am- 
herst College, given in 1869, ^^^ one before the 
same Society at Harvard College, in 1876. He 
chose for his theme at Amherst, ''The Method of 
Academic Culture." It is a comparison and a dis- 
cussion of the two disciplines, that gained by the 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 2$ 

pursuit of Strictly scientific studies in methods pre- 
scribed by their own nature, and that imparted by a 
distinctive academic discipline in which classical 
study furnishes both norm and impulse, including 
History, Philosophy, Poetry, and Art. He shows 
the fullest appreciation of what scientific studies can 
do. He grants that " the pure disciplinary uses of 
scientific study can hardly be over-estimated." But 
quoting from Emerson that pregnant sentence, "The 
foundation of culture is the moral sentiment," he 
advocates the claims of a distinctive academic cul- 
ture, not in place of the other, not in opposition to 
the other, but in alliance with scientific studies to 
preside over and direct them." '' Admirable culture 
of whatever kind," as he said upon another occasion, 
" must have its roots in the moral sentiment,'' and he 
sums up a view defended with acuteness and force, 
adorned with singular wealth of illustration, in the 
words : " Scientific training, unless regulated and 
qualified by broader culture, can only end in debil- 
itating instead of enlarging the spiritual nature. 
. . . For education must receive its shape from 
above, not from beneath." 

In June, 1876, he gave the Phi Beta Kappa ora- 
tion at Harvard College, choosing for his theme one 
gravely pertinent to a crisis in our national history, 
" The Alienation of the Educated Class from Politics." 
The line of thought in the address was at the farthest 
possible remove from the political pessimism which 
had in some quarters begun to assert itself. In this 
threatened alienation he recognized a sign of most 
evil portent upon our horizon. He defined the edu- 
cated class as " the large number who form the medi- 
ating terms between the intellectual leaders of the 



26 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

community and the great majority, as the interpre- 
ters and expounders of principles which others have 
explored." ..." In the wider sense, while the 
phrase implies educated intellect, it implies even 
more, educated judgment and educated conscience, 
those sovereign qualities which are usurped by no 
single calling but belong to man as man." He 
passed in dignified, but incisive and able, review, the 
boding utterances of noted European and English 
thinkers concerning our institutions. While con- 
ceding, for the argument, the utmost " that the most 
dismal of political Cassandras have asserted as to 
the working of American politics," he triumphantly 
showed that their complaints and grievances have 
not the significance which has been attributed to 
them. And then, taking positive ground, he brought 
out the truth, that the man educated in the ample 
sense previously outlined was '' a spiritual power in 
the State that no factions can outwit ; that no ma- 
jorities can overwhelm ; " that he " makes himself 
felt in a sphere where the vulgar conditions of po- 
litical action no longer operate, — 

*' No private but a person raised 
With strength sufficient, and command from Heaven." 

He was addressing, perhaps, the most brilliant as- 
semblage of educated men that our commencement 
occasions annually gather. And his enthusiastic 
reception by that tribunal of scholars was itself a 
high tribute to the timely because hopeful, to the 
eloquent because sincere, utterances of the orator. 

His various addresses on civic occasions consti- 
tute a remarkable group of such efforts. They began 
with his oration before the city authorities on July 4, 
1866. That is marked by the same comprehensive 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 2/ 

treatment which distinguished all his work, but lacks 
its thoroughness. But his address on the unveiling 
of the monument to Roger Williams ; at the cen- 
tennial celebration of the capture of Prescott ; on 
the opening of the free library at Bristol ; and 
memorably his last, on the centenary of the settle- 
ment of the town of Bristol, are among the best 
specimens of this species of oratorical effort. At 
first, in the delivery of these addresses, he used his 
manuscript. But he grew more and more indepen- 
dent of it, and in his last address spoke for more 
than an hour without hesitation, without a confused 
sentence, and without a note before him. The great 
master of Roman oratory has said, " No power of 
speaking can belong to any but to him who knows 
the subject on which he has to speak." ^ It is faint 
praise to say of Professor Diman that he knew the 
subject on which he had to speak. The merits of 
these addresses are the fitness of the word to the 
occasion, the body of vivid, stirring historical detail, 
or the line of high thinking pursued, the honesty, 
the independence of his positions, all suffused with 
pure literary tone. What Matthew Arnold has said 
of the poetry of Keats, may, with equal pertinence, 
be applied to the entire group of his addresses : 
" There is [in them] that stamp of high work which 
is akin to the character, which is character passing 
into intellectual productions." And then his style, 
how admirable for its purity and simplicity, how 
finished in its grace, the apt word chosen, sparing 
of ornament, yet rich in its general coloring and 
never bare. Joined to this, as a fit interpreter, was 

1 Dicendi enim virtus, nisi ei, qui dicit, ea, de quibus dicit, percepta 
sint, exstare non potest. — (Cicero De Oratore, Lib. i, Cap. xi.) 



2S A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

his delivery ; calm, conciliatory, self-possessed, mov- 
ing through its power of self-command, its tones 
musical and well modulated, his eye ever kindling 
with his thought, and his face expressive of every 
changing emotion his theme awakened. 

In the autumn of 1879 he was invited to give 
a course of Lowell Lectures. Deferring to the 
strongly expressed wish of Mr. Lowell, that they 
should discuss some subjects connected with Nat- 
ural Theology, he turned aside from his favorite his- 
toric studies, chose for his theme the relation of the 
latest scientific theories to Theism, and gave a long 
and laborious winter to the preparation of the de- 
sired course. He read widely and thoroughly all 
that scientific unbelief had to urge on which he 
could lay his hands. It chanced that I spent an 
evening with him just as he had fairly encountered 
the stress of the opposition. He was evidently 
pained to find that any satisfactory treatment of the 
issues involved would cost so much struggle. His 
tone was almost sad. But he grappled with the sub- 
ject, shunned no difficulties, and the result of it all 
is, in the words of Professor Fisher, a most com- 
petent judge, "a noble vindication of Theism, treat- 
ing fully and satisfactorily the problems and objec- 
tions raised by the science of the day, and having 
the literary charm that belonged to everything he 
wrote." The last sermon he ever wrote was the re- 
sult of all these studies. It was founded on the 
parable of the mustard seed, and its aim was to show 
that " enlarged study of nature and of nature's laws, 
instead of indisposing us to accept the distinctive 
teachings of Revelation, will arm those teachings 
with new arguments and lend them more convincing 
force." 



A C0MMEM0RA77VE DISCOURSE. 29 

Not by his voice alone did Professor Diman at- 
tempt to instruct men. His pen was seldom idle. 
The regret is now widely felt that he had not con- 
centrated his studies more. What he has done dis- 
cursively and fragmentarily only shows what he 
might have done in some extended work. What 
now remains from his pen, beside addresses already 
adverted to, are a few published sermons, a few ar- 
ticles in Reviews, book notices in leading journals, 
and a large amount of editorial writing for the " Prov- 
idence Journal." The best specimens of his Review 
articles are, that on '' University Corporations," ^ 
that on " The Roman Element in Modern Civiliza- 
tion," 2 and that on " Religion in America." ^ The 
last drew to itself a wide attention for its able gen- 
eralization, its elaborate summary of facts, and its 
luminous, fair treatment of a difficult subject. For 
the " North American Review," and the " Nation," he 
was in the habit of preparing book notices, mainly 
of works connected with historical study, such as 
Motley's " History of the Netherlands," or Ban- 
croft's "Races of the Pacific," or Masson's " Life of 
Milton." And all this work was done with painstak- 
ing. He well knew how worthless, how unjust, both 
to author and reader, such work is if done in a slov- 
enly and superficial manner ; how valuable if it is done 
faithfully and skillfully, and he wrought accordingly. 
Perhaps no one outside the editorial rooms of the 
*' Providence Journal " could have known the number 
and the variety of Professor Diman's contributions 
to the paper. His most intimate friends have since 

1 Baptist Quarterly, October, 1869. 

2 New Englander, January, 1872. 

^ North American Review, January, 1876. 



30 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

his death been astonished by it. These contribu- 
tions began more than twenty years ago. They 
cover a very wide field of discussion. The notices 
of Continental politics, of English questions as they 
rose, of ecclesiastical policy in all branches of the 
church, of distinguished men in all spheres of life, 
foreign or native, of books, of art, with articles in 
lighter vein, make up a body of editorial writing 
which would impress any one as remarkable, con- 
sidered as an addition to other and main labors. It 
is, in one view of it, ephemeral. But if viewed in 
relation to the promotion of a sound public opinion 
(and here he conceived the function of the scholar 
in politics mainly to lie) it is not ephemeral. And 
this is the justification which such a scholar as Pro- 
fessor Diman would ask for expending so much of 
his strength in the columns of the newspaper. 

This survey of Professor Diman's career gives us 
only the outward view. But the man, though in his 
works, is always more than his works. That fount- 
ain of intellectual vitality whence they flowed was, 
in Professor Diman, deep-set and exhaustless. It 
gave him easy mastery of subjects. He grasped an 
intricate point quickly. He absorbed a book quickly. 
He constructed his plans of work quickly. So easily 
was everything done that one might not give him 
credit for the pains with which everything was done. 
No matter what he had in hand, the law for him was 
the same, work proportioned to the end in view. 
Without strain, without noise, he wrought rapidly 
but thoroughly, and reached his goal, a well-breathed 
runner ready for some new intellectual race. Fol- 
lowing, too, the impulses of this mental vitality, he 
secured a many-sided culture. Few topics in con- 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 3 1 

versation could be started in which his word was not 
the saying of a man who had digested some knowl- 
edge of that subject. It was the genuine love of 
truth in many directions which developed this qual- 
ity in him. His mind not only stood four-square 
to all the varieties of knowledge, but was vitally 
impelled to seek a various and rich knowledge. 
Scientific truth attracted him least, but he never 
disparaged it. It was the spiritual side of things 
to which he was most drawn. From that he drew 
impulse, from the " whole varied and subtle experi- 
ence of humanity, including in it whatever of gen- 
uine and noble utterance, whatever in poetry, phi- 
losophy, or in history." In alliance with this was 
an intellectual outspokenness. He had no intellect- 
ual timidity, which is sometimes mistaken for wise 
caution. He was too fond of being in the opposition, 
too fond, perhaps, of paradox. But his love of truth 
was something vital and dominant in his intellectual 
constitution. He might say with John Hales, of 
Eton : " If, with all this cost and pains, my purchase 
is but error, I may safely say, to err hath cost me 
more than it has many to gain the truth." A virtue 
in excess becomes a fault, and so there may have 
been occasions when he was too much of the icono- 
clast. But better a thousand times intellectual icon- 
oclasm, which too rudely dashes against received 
opinions, than that intellectual dishonesty which 
plays fast and loose with subscriptions, and smothers 
convictions through fear of man or love of the world. 
A brilliant lecturer on history has lately, in 
speaking of Carlyle's distaste for the vocation of the 
teacher, said that "genius does not take to peda- 
gogy." But did not genius take to pedagogy when 



32 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

Plato taught in Athens, and John Milton had his 
scholars in London ? If genius cannot see in a true 
pedagogy what its contents really are, so much the 
worse for genius. At any rate. Professor Diman, by 
the breadth and fullness of his scholarship, found no 
difficulty in making his sphere of usefulness here a 
wide one. For years he has been a connecting link 
between the university and the city in which it 
stands ; nay, also, and the State of whose traditions 
he was proud. The college, in his view, could not 
largely thrive if it existed as an island washed on all 
sides by tides of business activity, and yet in scho- 
lastic seclusion, isolated from living interests. Al- 
ways have there been men in it to act as a mediating 
element between it and the stirring world outside, 
and Professor Diman but continued the goodly suc- 
cession. Hence his activity in various departments 
of municipal work, in questions of public education, 
reformations for the young, in the hospital, and in 
grave political crises, his readiness to lift his voice 
as a citizen for what he thought noblest and best in 
politics. I would not willingly utter a word that 
should seem to depreciate a very different class of 
college men, whose lives seem quite separate from 
all these interests of the community, who do their 
work as teachers modestly, quietly, efficiently, in 
class-rooms ; for whom the outside world has no meed 
of applause, but who fulfill noble aims in a noble fash- 
ion, as they train men. But when a man like Pro- 
fessor Diman is found, who can bring to the profes- 
sor's chair the gifts of public influence, and who, by 
identifying himself with various public interests, can 
be the spokesman for his city and his State as well 
as for his college, let us be thankful for such services 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 33 

as keep the college in the affections of men, in their 
hearts as well as in their heads. The rich vitality, 
the genuine honesty, the true breadth of the intel- 
lectual character were the controlling elements of his 
mental structure. Strength and beauty were in him 
blended in native endowment, blended in his culture, 
and blended also in his work. 

The social nature in him was opulent and fine of 
texture. As it revealed itself to his family in the 
sacred privacy 6i that doubly bereft and darkened 
home, its sweet and constant overflow, its tender 
grace, developing with passing years, hallowed and 
transfigured now by death, those who knew his home, 
knew full well. Of what he was in the sacred inter- 
course of friendship I hardly dare trust myself to 
speak. What depth and trueness, what gentleness 
and responsiveness of affection dwelt in that soul, 
affianced also with that gifted and fascinating mental 
nature ! They gave it warmth. He did wear, to 
many, an air of reserve. But reserved natures, when 
and where they open themselves in the gracious in- 
tercourse of friendship, are apt to be the most genial 
of men. His love of choice companionship, in his 
walks or by his fireside, his delight in the converse 
where soul touches soul in kindred experiences of 
life, or kindred tastes, or kindred struggles and as- 
pirations, elicited from him that rare power in con- 
versation which marked him everywhere. His wit 
sometimes glittering with its sarcastic thrusts, far 
often genial with its drollery, what charm it gave to 
all his talk ! Then, too, came out his fine enthusi- 
asm {he had no "bankrupt enthusiasm ") as together 
with his friends he discoursed on the subjects that 
3 



34 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 

lay near his heart. Ah, me ! those beautiful hours 
— how transfigured to memory they all are now. 

His Christian character was marked from the very 
outset, when he made his confession of Christ inside 
college walls and in student days, by manly tone, by 
intelligence, by genuineness. He was afraid of effu- 
siveness. He loved quiet earnestness in Christian 
life. He was too much repelled from really worthy 
types of Christian life which were of an opposite 
tenor, by reason of his tastes or distastes. He be- 
lieved profoundly in the church of the living God, 
and like Bunsen, from whom, indeed, he may have 
caught the taste, he loved with " passionate fondness 
its old familiar hymns, its solemn forms of prayer." 
As he allied himself with no school in theology, so, 
of late years, he identified himself actively with no 
one denomination of Christians. But, however this 
may be explained, it may never be explained with any 
truth as the giving up of early convictions. He was 
" knit by all the chords of his being to the church of 
the past," and he knew no hope for man but in Chris- 
tianity, preserved and proclaimed by the church of 
the future. 

Such, imperfectly outlined, was his character; 
such his work. This is finished. That is garnered 
in the heavenly immortality, has passed also from 
the force of a personal power here into the influence 
of a sacred and beautiful memory. Our eulogy dies 
away into threnody. "All human work," Carlyle 
says, " is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. 
Only the worker thereof and the spirit that dwell- 
eth in him is significant." Judged by this test 
Professor Diman's career is significant. Significant 
of the influence true culture may exert — of the 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 35 

noble results true culture may produce, and signifi- 
cant also of our loss. These to his memory. But 
oh, " the heavy change that he is gone." He had 
been sought for pulpits in our principal cities by 
reason of his abihties as a preacher ; for professor- 
ships in other institutions ; repeatedly by Harvard 
College, where he was honored and beloved, as he 
was honored and beloved here ; sought also for po- 
sitions as the head of seats of learning. But our 
rejoicing is this, that his work was finished here in 
the university, of which he had been ever a filial 
son, in the city which was proud of him, in the State 
which he loved and with whose history he has for- 
ever linked himself. He was stricken down in the 
very flush and bloom of his power and plans. The 
summer vacation had been delightfully passed with 
his family, and with dear, life-long friends among 
the mountains and lakes and by the sounding sea. 
Recruited, apparently, by it, he had gone partly 
through the winter's work. For the first time in 
his life did that work seem to drag him along with 
it instead of being triumphantly lifted and borne by 
him. Disease came at length, so treacherously that 
none feared till it was too. late. And then, on that 
winter evening, the shock — the pitiless, dreadful 
shock, the hush that settled in a hundred homes of 
the city, in the very streets. Nothing could have 
been more touching, and nothing could have been 
more significant. Months have passed, and yet we 
ask ourselves. Is he gone f The vitality that was in 
him, so exuberant, so large, making itself felt in so 
many circles, is still giving a sense of his presence, 
so strong and deep that we cannot help recalling 
and repeating those lines of the " In Memoriam," so 
closely apphcable to our beloved dead : — 



36 A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE, 

* If one should bring me this report 

That thou hadst touched the land to-day, 
And I went down unto the quay 
And found thee lying in the port ; 

" And standing muffled round with woe, 
Should see thy passengers in rank 
Come stepping lightly down the plank 
And beckoning unto those they know ; 

" And if along with these should come 
The man I held as half divine, 
Should strike a sudden hand in mine 
And ask a thousand things of home ; 

" And I should tell him all my pain, 

And how my life had drooped of late, 
And he should sorrow o'er my state 
And marvel what possessed my brain, 

" And I perceive no touch of change. 

No hint of death in all his frame ; 

But found him all in all the same, 

I should not think it to be strange." 

We buried him amid the snows of winter. The 
sky over our head, as we bore him to the cemetery, 
was full of blessed sunlight. There was '' calm and 
deep peace in the wide air." There was calm and 
deep peace, too, in our hearts as we remembered the 
noble life and recalled the words, " Blessed are the 
dead that die in the Lord." We thought of the 
coming spring, in which he always so delighted, and 
the spring has come to us. He is, in the language 
of a favorite hymn, where 

— " Everlasting spring abides 
And never withering flowers." 

Yet he himself has uttered words in one of his 
sermons which are so deeply true and so touchingly 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 37 

pertinent, that they prove the fittest conclusion to 
this commemorative service : — 

" Even when in middle life the strong man is suddenly 
stricken down, dying in the midst of the battle with har- 
ness on, there are many aspects in which the sorrow is 
full of comfort. It is the death which the good soldier 
never shuns. The memory left is not of decay, of feeble- 
ness, but of the fullness of manly strength. The image 
which affection cherishes is a grateful one. And es- 
pecially is this the case when into the zealous and faith- 
ful labor of a few years have been compressed the work 
of a long life. We need not length of days to do well 
our lifework. The most consecrated souls are often 
called soonest away." 

One sad word more must needs be spoken. To 
end this memorial, without allusion to the deeper 
shadows which have settled on that bereaved home, 
were to repress sympathies that struggle for ex- 
pression. The mysteries grow thicker and darker 
which have closed in on us. That fair young life 
so suddenly quenched ! Yet that life in which he 
so delighted, so soon with him, and both with Christ 
in his glory. We in our grief lift our eyes to the 
hills whence cometh our help, and our hearts to the 
region, — 

" Where beyond these voices there is peace." 



LITERARY AND HISTORICAL 
ADDRESSES. 



THE 

ALIENATION OF THE EDUCATED 
CLASS FROM POLITICS. 

AN ORATION BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 
AT CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 29, 1876. 



You ask me to address you at a time which 
hardly allows the usual license in the selection of a 
theme. Gathering, as we do, to this annual festival 
on the eve of the great secular commemoration 
which rivets all regards to the issues of an unex- 
ampled experiment, I should justly forfeit your sym- 
pathy were I rash enough to divert your thoughts 
from those imperious public concerns which mingle 
so much of pride and fear with their far-reaching 
problems. Even when meeting as associates of an 
academical fraternity, we cannot forget that we are 
constituents of a larger society, — partners in a fel- 
lowship more comprehensive than any specific call- 
ing or profession, — members incorporate into that 
spacious and supreme commonwealth, without whose 
wholesome restraints and benign supervision all 
bonds would be relaxed, all intellectual progress 
would falter, and all highest aims which we here 
cherish fail of accomplishment. Least of all can 
we be unmindful of such weightier concerns when 
assembled, for the first time, under the shadow of 



42 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

these walls, — these walls that have been reared in 
recognition of the sacrifice made by scholars on the 
common altar, which, long as they stand, will attest 
the alliance of generous culture and unselfish public 
spirit, and whose very stones would cry out should 
the sons of this illustrious mother ever grow heed- 
less of the lessons here inculcated. 

Is the culture which proved itself so equal to the 
strenuous calls of war less able to cope with the 
strain of civil life ? Is that educated class which 
you represent coming to be a less efficient force in 
our national experiment ? Are our intellectual and 
our political activities doomed to pursue two con- 
stantly diverging paths, our ideal aims ceasing to 
qualify and shape our practical endeavors ? These 
are among the questions which force themselves 
upon us at a time like this. The solicitude which 
they awaken is shown in the humiliating contrasts 
so freely drawn between the public men of the pres- 
ent day and those of an earlier period ; in the fre- 
quent discussion of the sphere of the scholar in 
politics, and in the approbation so heartily expressed 
when men of exceptional training have been se- 
lected to fill important public stations. If this con- 
viction that the breach between Politics and Culture 
is widening be well grounded, it is a capital arraign- 
ment of American society, — the one result that 
would stamp our republican experiment with fail- 
ure. Does our political system exclude from public 
recognition those superior interests which enlist the 
most enthusiastic cooperation of generous minds, or 
does it tend to strip of legitimate influence those 
best fitted to wrestle with worthy issues .-* Which- 
ever the cause, the result would be equally disas- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 43 

trous. Should such a deplorable divorce become es- 
tablished, our culture would be cut off from health- 
ful contact with living interests, and our politics be 
robbed of pure and ennobling inspiration ; our schol- 
ars would sink to pedants and our statesmen to 
politicians. The merit of such a policy as ours can- 
not be measured by the success with which it meets 
the common ends of government. However effect- 
ive it may have proved in promoting material pros- 
perity, or a wholesome dispersion of political power, 
if it does not at the same time hold in happy ad- 
justment the highest instincts and the positive 
governing forces of the nation, it cannot claim to be 
truly representative, nor long elicit that prompt alle- 
giance of reason and conscience on which all genu- 
ine representative institutions must ultimately rest. 
Not extent of territory, nor multiplication of mate- 
rial resources, but a noble and sympathetic public 
life is the guage of national greatness. " The excel- 
lencie and perfection of a commonweale," to bor- 
row the words of Bodin, "are not to be measured 
by the largeness of the bounds thereof, but by the 
bounds of virtue itself." All famous states have 
been informed with ideal forces. No dazzling spread 
of material products at Philadelphia may console us, 
if throughout that varied show we are haunted with 
the conviction that what gives meaning and grace 
and admirableness to national success is losing its 
sway over us. Though this great Leviathan, whose 
completed century we celebrate, be indeed hugest of 
all commonwealths that have breasted the flood of 
time, its vast bulk will only stand revealed as more 
ugly, more clumsy, more preposterous, if it simply 
drift on the sleepy drench of private, selfish interests 
and sordid cares. 



44 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

In discussing this .question let us not forget the 
wider meaning with which the phrase "educated 
class " has become invested. With men of excep- 
tional eminence in the selecter walks of literature 
and science we are not concerned. That absorbing 
devotion to a pursuit, by which alone its supreme 
prizes are purchased, carries with it, in most cases, a 
corresponding sacrifice of aptitude for other call- 
ings ; and the familiar instances in which some of 
our foremost men of letters have entered with suc- 
cess the political arena must be reckoned as bril- 
liant exceptions to the rule. The habits of the 
study are not the best discipline for affairs, however 
true the maxim of Bacon, that no kind of men love 
business for itself but those that are learned. Ex- 
perience has shown that the intellectual qualities 
which insure success in the discovery of truth are 
rarely combined with the qualities which lend these 
truths their greatest practical efficiency. The serv- 
ice which original genius renders society in other 
ways far more than compensates for any injury which 
its renunciation of ordinary duties may involve. 
The world lost nothing by leaving Adam Smith in a 
professor's chair, and gained nothing by giving La 
Place a minister's portfoho. By the term "educated 
class," I have in mind that much larger number who 
form the mediating term between the intellectual 
leaders of the community and the great majority ; 
the interpreters and expounders of principles which 
others have explored ; the liberal connection, so ad- 
quately represented here to-day, not of the learned 
professions only, but of men generously inured, by 
the discipline of such an ancient university as this, 
to just opinions, and sincere speech, and independ- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 45 

ent action ; whose scholarship is the gracious ap- 
parel of well-compacted character. In this wider 
sense, while the phrase implies educated intellect 
and educated taste, it implies even more, educated 
judgment and educated conscience, those sovereign 
quahties which are usurped by no single calling, but 
belong to man as man, — to man in the most benefi- 
cent play of his faculties, in the ripest growth of 
his reason, and in the widest scope of his influence. 
This is the class through whom the impulses of 
sound culture are disseminated, and whose aliena- 
tion from public interests is a sign of such evil por- 
tent on our political horizon. 

In our own case, this lessening interest of the ed- 
ucated class in politics is more significant when we 
recall the fact, that politics once disputed with the- 
ology the sway over the most vigorous thought 
among us. Without doubt this modification may 
be traced, in part, to the operation of general social 
causes ; but I can by no means consent to their 
opinion who would find its main explanation here. 
That the interests of society are far more diversified 
to-day than a century ago, that the speculative prob- 
lems pressing for solution are vastly more numer- 
ous and complex, that the most adventuresome and 
prolific intellectual energy of our time no longer 
expends itself on those questions which in former 
ages exercised such potent fascination, no man will 
deny ; yet this spurring of mental activity in new 
directions need not have caused its zeal to flag in 
the old. Is it not the prerogative of all genuine 
impulse to quicken a common movement .'' Does 
not success in one field rouse to new effort in every 
other 1 I would not include in this the wild pur- 



46 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

suit of wealth, the vulgar materialism, of which in 
recent years we have had such shocking examples, 
and within whose poisoned circle all generous aspi- 
ration withers ; the rivalry which I am here discuss- 
ing is the rivalry of intellectual forces. Can social 
progress, in this sense, involve any such result as is 
here alleged ? Can there be any real antagonism 
between the study of nature and the study of man ; 
between investigations of the laws printed on the 
heavens and the laws by which society advances and 
great and durable states are built up ? When sci- 
ence, ceasing to speak as a child, published through 
Newton decrees that claimed obedience beyond the 
flaming walls of space, did it chill the interest of 
Locke in those inquiries which scattered such pro- 
lific seeds in the soil of this new world ? The last 
century was in France an epoch of prodigious scien- 
tific movement ; but in what period were social and 
political problems ever more keenly debated ? The 
country that made its boast of a Buffon and a La- 
voisier could point not less to a Montesquieu and a 
Turgot. Nay, in the same person the two tenden- 
cies were sometimes combined, and the precocious 
genius of Condorcet was busied equally with the 
differential calculus, and with the foundations of 
human society. After reaching almost the highest 
distinction as a mathematician, he declared " that 
for thirty years he had hardly passed a day without 
meditating on the political sciences." If, therefore, 
our educated class has lost the interest it once felt 
in political problems, this result must be ascribed 
to something else than our stimulated zeal for phys- 
ical studies. And if we can no longer say with 
Algernon Sydney, that poUtical questions ''so far 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 47 

concern all mankind, that besides the influence on 
our future life they may be said to comprehend all 
that in this world deserves to be cared for," they 
certainly have not lost their importance as the great 
issues of modern society are more distinctly re- 
vealed. 

The proposition has not lacked vigorous support 
with a brilliant class of English writers, who shrink 
appalled from a political tendency which they can 
see no way of successfully resisting, that the popular 
movement of modern times, resting as it does on the 
postulate that all men should be equal so far as the 
laws can make them so, reduces the individual to 
impotence by making him a hopelessly feeble unit 
in the presence of an overwhelming majority. In 
such a plight it is mere mockery, we are told, to 
exhort men of superior parts to exercise an inde- 
pendent influence. The wise and the good stand on 
a level with the foolish and the bad, and to hope 
that reason will rule in the ordering of affairs when 
each one is provided with a vote and may cast it 
as he likes, is an idle dream. ' This argument does 
not apply, of course, to our own experiment alone, 
but is directed against a tendency which in all so- 
cieties that claim to be civilized is setting forward 
with accelerated force. It seems enough to say, in 
answer, that we are not now in a position to analyze 
with accuracy a movement of such tremendous im- 
port. Modern democracy is too recent a phenomenon 
to admit of any estimate as yet of the complex range 
of its social and political and intellectual conse- 
quences. It is on the dead, not on the Hving, that 
the coroner holds his inquest. Ancient society was 
comparatively simple ; its phenomena for *the most 



48 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

part admit of obvious explanation ; its completed 
history allows us to pass a confident judgment upon 
it as a whole. Mediaeval society, if less simple, 
still turned, in its chief phases, on few points ; even 
feudalism, once so perplexed a study, has yielded to 
recent analysis, and when it arose, how it affected 
the classes included in its range, why it came to an 
end, are questions about which scholars are ceasing 
to dispute. But that great popular movement, which 
is now so clearly seen to have thrust its strong roots 
down into the Middle Age, is still in process ; we 
ourselves are but parts of it ; the terms of the mighty 
equation are not yet written out. It is pleasant to 
fancy that we stand secure on the rocks and gaze at 
the mighty rush of the waters, — 

" E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem," 

but it is fancy and nothing more. In the flood of 
phenomena all perspective is blurred, and relations 
of cause and effect are hopelessly mixed. We are 
in danger of joining what has only a seeming con- 
nection, and of attributing to one class of causes 
consequences that are due wholly to another. No 
country ever had a more genial and appreciative 
critic of its institutions than we had in the accom- 
plished Frenchman who attempted the first philo- 
sophical estimate of American Democracy, but how 
crude and ludicrous even, in the light of our later 
experience, seem some of De Tocqueville's most 
elaborate judgments. Has American Democracy, 
we may well ask, proved unequal to the task of levy- 
ing taxes, or of raising armies } De Tocqueville 
was impressed, as others who have come among us 
have been impressed, with the lack of conspicuous 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 49 

ability among our public men ; but to argue that 
democratic institutions are unfavorable to the de- 
velopment of the highest individual excellence, be- 
cause men of moderate parts are most commonly 
selected for public offices, implies a misunderstand- 
ing of the meaning and function of government in a 
democratic state. When it is so confidently argued 
that the theory of political equality must result in 
mediocrity, because it holds out fewer prizes to ex- 
ceptional superiority in the public service, it should 
be remembered that in other ways it multiplies the 
incitements to effort. And even conceding that 
the removal of political restrictions can add nothing 
to the intrinsic force of individual character, it by 
no means follows that such removal presents any 
bar to the full and varied development of existing 
forces. 

Is it not time to have done with what the latest 
historian of England terms " this silly talk about 
democracy." Democratic institutions are on trial ; 
so is modern society itself ; it is quite too soon to 
bring in the verdict. Of all the reproaches hurled 
against the popular tendency of modern times the 
most ill-grounded, surely, is the dismal cry about 
the tyranny of the majority. This is one of the es- 
pecial dangers on which De Tocqueville dwells ; and 
later writers, borrowing the hint from him, are never 
weary of repeating that, overawed and intimidated 
by the opinion of the unthinking mass, all expres- 
sion of individual sentiment is stifled, and the intel- 
ligent and thoughtful few are deterred from attempt- 
ing to wield the influence which they ought to ex- 
ercise. But if in a community where law authorizes 
and protects the expression of opinion, any individ- 
4 



^O THE ALIENATION OF THE 

ual is restrained by prudential considerations from 
promulgating what his reason recognizes as true, or 
his conscience affirms as right, the true explana- 
tion must be sought not in any tyranny of the ma- 
jority but rather in the lack of that " intrinsic force " 
on which Leslie Stephen so vigorously insists. Ev- 
ery fuller soul, elected in the great crises of his- 
tory to lead the forlorn hope of the race, has been 
in a minority ; nay, the captain in the most mar- 
velous revolution the world has seen was in a mi- 
nority of one. Earnest, aggressive, self-forgetful 
minorities have been, in every age, the conditions 
of social progress ; against them the tyranny of the 
majority has always been ruthlessly exercised ; ex- 
ercised by arbitrary power, — under the forms of 
law, — with the sanction of religion ; exercised with 
the sword, the faggot, and the rack ; and instead of 
wielding with us an aggravated rule, never has the 
power of the majority been subject, in so many 
ways, to checks and bounds as under the institu- 
tions which an English lord chancellor has described 
as the very greatest refinement of polity to which 
any age has ever given birth. And never too, it 
may be truly said, has the will of the minority been 
more outspoken than with us. The crowning event 
in our hundred years of history, the turning point 
in our great struggle for national integrity, was the 
result of a public sentiment, created, shaped, car- 
ried to its triumphant issue by a persistent and res- 
olute minority ! 

" For Gods delight in Gods, 
And thrust the weak aside." 

An explanation of the abstinence of our educated 
class from politics, more nearly connected with our 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 5 I 

distinctive polity, has been discovered by Mr. Bage- 
hot in the difference between a cabiiaet and a pres- 
idential system. To this difference, he claims, must 
also be attributed the lack of any public opinion in 
America finished and chastened like that of Eng- 
land. With the English, attention to politics means 
a real direction of affairs, the nation making itself 
felt with effective force at the determining crises of 
party conflicts. Whether the ministry shall go out 
or remain in is decided by a parliamentary division, 
and on this decision public opinion outside of Par- 
liament, the secret, pervading disposition of society, 
exercises a potent influence. The nation is stirred 
to the expression of an opinion because it realizes 
that its opinion is decisive. The sympathy remains 
at all times close and vital between public senti- 
ment and the actual governing power. But with 
ourselves precisely the reverse of this obtains. Save 
in the instant of exercising the elective franchise 
the nation has no decisive influence ; in that su- 
preme effort its vital forces are exhausted, and it 
must wait an appointed time until its periodic func- 
tion is restored. Hence it is not incited to keep its 
judgment fresh, nor is its opinion disciplined by 
continuous exercise. Our congressional disputes 
are " prologues without a play ; " they involve no 
catastrophe ; the prize of power is not a legislative 
gift. As a natural result, men of mark are not 
strongly tempted to secure seats in a deliberative 
body when they have only power to make a speech, 
when they are neither stimulated by prospect of in- 
fluence nor chastened by dread of responsibility. 
And when public opinion itself is not subject to 
constant modification, those who shape public opinion 



52 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

are deprived of the most positive incitement to ef- 
fort. The results are too distant and uncertain. 

To much of this reasoning it is enough to say 
that while the term of office of the administration 
is fixed by law, and so far our system is open to the 
reproach of being inelastic, yet the term is so brief 
that the nation hardly recovers from the excitement 
of one presidential election before it is plunged into 
another ; that the choice of the chief magistrate is 
only one of numberless ways in which the elective 
franchise is exercised ; that congressional debates, 
if they have not the effect on the instant to change 
the administration, do have a direct and often a 
controlling influence upon its policy ; and that the 
national legislature, so far from being unaffected by 
public opinion out of doors, is often controlled by it 
to a deplorable extent. That in the agony of a great 
ministerial crisis a parliamentary debate fixes pub- 
lic attention, as it cannot be fixed by a speech in 
Congress, must be conceded ; but that such an eager 
strife for power and place disciplines and instructs 
public opinion any more effectually than our more 
rigid method is an assertion that seems destitute of 
all sound support. And still less am I disposed to 
admit that the participation of our educated class in 
politics would be sensibly promoted by the removal 
of the strongly accented distinction between the 
executive and the legislative branch, which consti- 
tutes so cardinal a feature of our constitution, and 
by making the tenure of the highest administrative 
office directly dependent on the will of a congres- 
sional majority. English experience does not war- 
rant the expectation that public life would be ren- 
dered more attractive to men of nice moral instincts ; 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 53 

and while the immediate prospect of great place, 
without doubt, supplies a most powerful stimulus to 
effort, it can yet, under ordinary conditions, address 
itself to only a limited class. The great body of 
educated men must be inspired by a worthier mo- 
tive. 

While, however, I cannot concede to Mr. Bagehot 
that the chief explanation of the alienation of our 
educated men from politics is to be found in the 
mere mode of administration, I think it must be 
admitted that there are certain features of our sys- 
tem which have tended, in no small degree, to 
weaken the hold of public interests upon some of 
the more earnest and disinterested of this class. 
Our system is one of carefully limited powers, from 
which is excluded the larger share of those ques- 
tions which appeal to the deepest convictions of 
mankind. It sprang from political needs, and was 
carefully fashioned to compass certain definite and 
practical aims. But since that day when the con- 
quering Franks conferred temporal dominion on the 
successor of the fisherman, the questions which have 
allured the most generous and enthusiastic spirits 
to the field of politics have grown out of the dis- 
puted relations of the temporal and spiritual powers. 
These commanding problems for a time turned Dante 
from poetry and Occam from theology ; and if, in 
the press of modern interests, they have ceased to 
reign supreme, they have still given to modern Eu- 
ropean politics most of its noblest impulses. They 
have provoked the most profound inquiries, the most 
disinterested effort, the most unselfish surrender to 
magnanimous if not seldom mistaken and impracti- 
cable ends. They have drawn into the heated arena 



•54 ^^^ ALIENATION OF THE 

of politics not a few whom only the most sacred al- 
legiance to ideal principle could have tempted to a 
public career. On the other hand our politics, for 
the past hundred years, have been bereft of these 
ennobling impulses, and political life, of necessity, 
has lost no small part of the attraction which it has 
furnished, in other lands, to the purest, most earnest, 
most cultivated minds. It has not, for example, been 
within the scope of our American institutions to 
produce such a man as the late Count Montalem- 
bert, coupling the courage and address of a great 
orator with the religious enthusiasm of a monk, de- 
lighting to look at politics as primarily the means 
of realizing spiritual results, a genuine j^/y des crois^s 
amid the fierce debates of the French Assembly ; 
nor such a man as Gladstone, faulty perhaps as a 
mere party leader, but treading with no unequal 
step after Pitt and Peel as a parliamentary debater, 
and surpassing both, in the comprehensiveness of his 
range and the earnestness of his moral conviction, 
habitually looking at politics in the light of man's 
largest relations as an immortal being, disowned by 
Oxford when most truly faithful to Oxford's earliest 
traditions. That memorable measure which taxed 
his distinctive capabilities as an original legislator, 
and elicited the most transcendent exhibition of his 
oratory, was a problem with which no American 
statesman could be called to deal. And who sup- 
poses, for a moment, that the ordinary discipline 
which a public career with us supplies would qualify 
one of our party leaders, after laying down the cares 
of office, to discuss, as Mr. Gladstone has recently 
discussed, the questions to which the novel assump- 
tions of the Vatican have given such added signifi- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 55 

cance. If the separation of church and state that 
obtains with us has helped religion, it has certainly- 
narrowed the range and weakened the motive of 
political action. 

But not only was our government estabhshed as 
one of expressly limited powers ; very soon after it 
went into operation a political thesis came to be gen- 
erally accepted which gave this principle a wider and 
more pernicious application. At the beginning of 
the present century the maxim was eagerly accepted 
and enforced, that the functions of government, in 
general, ought to be confined within the narrowest 
limits, and directed only to the most utilitarian ends. 
Since the adoption of our federal constitution two 
distinct political tendencies have shown themselves 
among us, — two tendencies radically distinct in ori- 
gin and spirit, yet singularly tending to the same 
result. One was a strong infusion of the politics of 
sentiment, borrowed from Rousseau by Mr. Jefferson, 
coloring our famous Declaration, and proving itself 
through all our history by a passion for abstract max- 
ims of equality and liberty, by a somewhat ill-regu- 
lated zeal in promoting whatever schemes of social 
and political -reform, and by an undiscriminating 
sympathy with revolutionary movements throughout 
the world. The marked characteristic of this tend- 
ency has been contempt for the teachings of tradition 
and experience, and a confident disposition to solve 
each new problem simply upon its own merits. Po- 
litical action, controlled and guided by such maxims, 
can have but slender attraction for the educated 
class, whose very training implies respect for prece- 
dent, who shrink with instinctive suspicion from a 
sentimental apprehension of political or moral truths, 



56 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

and who are accustomed to value liberty simply as a 
means to an end. If by liberty be meant merely the 
removal of restraint, — the sense in which some of 
its most famous advocates in our time seem to un- 
derstand it, — it will be long before men of sound 
culture can be brought to give it a very enthusiastic 
countenance. But by the side of this sentimental 
conception of political rights there has existed an- 
other tendency which in actual practice has usurped 
the control of public policy. The twin gods of our 
political Pantheon have been Rousseau and Bentham. 
To these two masters all our political theories since 
we became an independent nation may be traced. 
For whatever may be thought of the utilitarian phi- 
losophy as an abstract code of morals, it has unques- 
tionably stamped itself upon our time as a practical 
rule of legislation. Had this rule always been ap- 
plied in the enlarged definition given it by Mill its 
results might have been less deplorable ; but the 
maxim so emphatically reiterated by the founder of 
the school, that government is a necessary evil, the 
legislator being simply a physician summoned to 
wrestle with a disease, worked a fatal paralysis of 
political opinion. The state was unclothed of all 
that gave it authority and majesty ; politics, surren- 
dered to mere expediency, were hopelessly divorced 
from the restraints of right and duty, and high sound- 
ing declarations of zeal for the general good came, 
too often, to cover the vulgar conflict of private and 
selfish interests. Here, too, so far as concerned the 
participation of the educated class, the same result 
inevitably followed. Men whose deepest solicitude 
was for ideal and spiritual ends shrunk from what 
seemed so much a struggle for mere personal advan- 
tages. 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 57 

But, without doubt, the consideration that has 
weighed most in chilUng the interest of our educated 
class in politics is connected far less with the theory 
of our government than with its practical working. 
It is the wide-spread conviction that in the actual 
administration of such affairs as fall within its lim- 
ited range, culture, training, intellectual equipment 
of any kind, instead of being valued as essential con- 
ditions of efficient public service, are rather hin- 
drances to a political career. It was the evident 
expectation of the framers of our system, that the 
working of the elective principle would result in the 
elimination of the best elements of the body politic ; 
and that eminent fitness would be the recognized 
test for responsible position. As we are forced sadly 
to confess, this hope has been disappointed, and our 
government has come to embody, not the highest, 
but the average intelligence, and to hold out its 
highest prizes to adroit management rather than to 
admitted desert. That the majority of those who 
formed the educated class in this country when our 
constitution went into operation looked with distrust 
upon the experiment is a fact famihar to all stu- 
dents of our history ; but could they have foreseen 
the inevitable modification which that experiment 
was destined to undergo, could they have foreseen 
how much more powerful that popular control which 
they so much dreaded was destined to become, their 
distrust would have changed to despair ; over the 
portal of the structure which they reared with so 
much pains they would have carved the ominous 
warning — 

" All hope abandon, ye who enter in ! " 



58 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

And yet, if we fairly considered it, this modifica- 
tion was but the logical working out of the primary 
postulate in which our whole political system rested, 
and, if we take a just view of that system, will fur- 
nish no ground whatever for the suspicion that we 
have wandered from the normal path of our political 
development. It is a modification that, after all, 
has lessened rather in appearance than in reality 
the real influence of the educated class. It fur- 
nishes no ground either for indifference or discour- 
agement ; for if the visible prizes of political success 
lie less within their grasp, the opportunities for the 
exercise of a permanent and controlling influence 
have been in no way diminished. 

Let us concede, for the argument, the utmost that 
the most dismal of our political Cassandras have as- 
serted, that a representative government, under dem- 
ocratic rule, must inevitably conform to the level of 
the majority which it represents ; and conceding, 
too, what in this whole discussion has been strangely 
assumed as a thing of course, that the majority in 
any community will always prove themselves less 
capable and less intelligent in the direction of affairs 
than the minority, it still would by no means follow 
that under institutions like ours an educated minor- 
ity would be finally cut off from a wholesome par- 
ticipation in political duties. Those who reason in 
this way reason from precedents that do not apply 
to our condition, and mistake the function of gov- 
ernment, and the significance of public offices under 
a system where the representative principle is al- 
lowed full play. For the gist of the complaint that 
educated men with us are debarred from exercising 
their legitimate influence in politics, for the most 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 59 

part means simply that they are not selected to fill 
public offices, and so cannot make themselves felt 
in the ordinary manipulations of the political ma- 
chine. The complaint is well grounded, and the 
grievance complained of is a real grievance ; yet 
does it have the significance which has been attrib- 
uted to it ? May not what has been so persistently 
urged in proof of our political decline be a passing 
but inevitable phase of our development ? But ex- 
cluding other considerations that here suggest them- 
selves, the position on which I wish to fasten your 
attention is simply this : that under a strictly rep- 
resentative government, like our own, public func- 
tions, even when regarded from a strictly political 
point of view, are less significant than under sys- 
tems where power is possessed, not as a trust, but 
as an estate, and hence that exclusion from a tech- 
nical public career carries with it far less sacrifice 
of real influence. 

The framers of our constitution were not seeking 
to carry out any abstract formulas ; their simple aim 
was to set up a compact and well-articulated con- 
stitutional republic. Yet while they had in mind a 
system rather than a theory, and restrained public 
opinion by checks and guarantees, they built on ra- 
tional foundations and recognized a principle the 
full scope of which they did not themselves, per- 
haps, suspect. In this recognition lay the essential 
originality of their contrivance, and the sole claim 
of their labors to mark an epoch in the history of 
political experiments. In the governments of the 
Old World the administration was the state. The 
famous maxim of Louis XIV. was no empty boast, 
but the terse formulating of a maxim which Bossuet 



60 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

had elaborately vindicated as the teaching of Holy 
Writ. In the purely modern monarchy which the 
unscrupulous genius of Frederic erected upon force 
the maxim was as fully recognized ; and even in the 
mixed system which Walpole and Grenville adminis- 
tered, hereditary monarchy and hereditary peerage 
remained, in theory at least, remote from any pop- 
ular control. But our system, whatever the artificial 
checks it sought to interpose, rested, at last, in the 
explicit recognition of one single, homogeneous, 
sovereign power. This power lay behind the legis- 
lature, behind the executive, behind the constitution 
itself ; for no principle can be plainer than that 
so strongly insisted on by Hobbes, — and which 
Austin has repeated after Hobbes, — that sovereign 
power is, in its nature, incapable of legal limitation. 
Resting thus, as our institutions do, both in theory 
and fact, on popular will, it is true of us in a sense 
more complete than it has been possible to affirm it 
of any former political society, that it is Public 
Opinion which rules : that all-powerful judge, which, 
in the language of the accomplished prince who is 
writing so impartially the story of our great civil 
strife, ''possesses, perhaps, the caprices but not the 
fatal infatuation of despots." With us government 
is the mere function through which the public will 
is made efficient, not directing that will, but created 
and determined by it. Washington himself most 
clearly recognized this principle, when, in 1793, he 
wrote : '' I only wish, whilst I am a servant of the 
public, to know the will of my masters, that I may 
govern myself accordingly;" words of peculiar em- 
phasis as coming from such a man, It is a com- 
monplace remark that a leading tendency of modern 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 6 1 

civilization is to make the influence of society greater 
and the influence of government relatively less ; but 
it would be a more accurate statement that govern- 
ment has become more the agency through which the 
power of society is wielded, the relation of the two be- 
ing not antagonistic, but harmonious. According to 
this view, government should receive, not give, the 
impulse. That government alone is strong which 
marches at the head of popular convictions. Never 
was the real strength of our own government so 
proudly demonstrated as in the dark crisis when the 
conspiracy against it first revealed the mighty force of 
the national sentiment. One reason, doubtless, why 
the political discussions of the past generation have 
lost so much of their interest, is, that they were so 
much concerned with the mere form under which 
the masking spirit hides itself, and reached so 
seldom the deeper sources of national life. And 
one of the most precious results of our late struggle 
has been to cure us of the habit of looking so ex- 
clusively at the mere formal constitution, and turn- 
ing our gaze to those deeper conditions of national 
unity and strength that lie in the great providential 
dispositions of our history. Let us not call it a vic- 
tory of the North over the South, but rather the vin- 
dication of our formal law by the great facts of our 
historical development. In this truer, profounder 
conception of the state, as anterior to the most 
sacred and authoritative expressions of its will, we 
have at once the right explanation of our political 
system, and at the same time the most encouraging 
exhibition of the true sphere of the educated class. 
For it follows that the real governing class are not, 
and are not meant to be, the mere agents of admin- 



62 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

istration, but those on whom rests the responsibil- 
ity of creating and informing that sovereign public 
opinion, — of which, in a free community, the ad- 
ministration is the mere mouth-piece and attorney. 

What does it matter that this pubUc opinion can 
only make itself efficient through the action of the 
majority? In a government by discussion, to bor- 
row a favorite phrase of Mr. Bagehot, the type to- 
ward which all civilized states are tending, and of 
which our own presents the most perfect example, 
what other method could be introduced ? Lord 
Bacon, who denounces an appeal to the majority as 
the worst of all tests in the decision of purely intel- 
lectual questions, admits that in politics and religion 
it is the safest rule. It was the voice of the majority 
which fixed the articles of Catholic faith at Nice, 
and which admitted the Bill of Rights as part of 
the British constitution. It is no modern device, as 
some would seem to think, but was recognized by 
the Greeks as a fundamental principle of corporate 
political action, which so careful a writer as the late 
Cornewall Lewis terms the most important improve- 
ment introduced into practical politics since the 
dawn of civilization. All admit that the contrivance 
is defective ; but when the ultimate decision is made 
to rest, not with any single individual but with a 
collective body, it is difficult to see what other ar- 
rangement could be substituted for it ; and the 
phrase "rule of the masses" will lose much of its 
repugnant meaning if we allow it to be divested of 
associations which it has inherited from other ages, 
and from conditions of society widely differing from 
our own. In the old Latin proverb it is not inaptly 
termed argiimentum pessimi ; for a Roman populace, 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 6^ 

at least in Seneca's time, was compacted of every 
pernicious element. Even as the phrase is now- 
used in most European countries, it has no meaning 
here ; for, happily, we have no class sentenced by 
inexorable social distinctions to hopeless poverty 
and ignorance. The exceptions which a few of our 
larger cities furnish are not products of our civiliza- 
tion. The majority with us is a majority not in- 
deed of high culture, not always of wise discern- 
ment, not exempt from the influence of prejudice, 
but singularly open to new impressions, of flexible 
opinions, of ever-fluctuating social consequence, and 
never reluctant to recognize the application of a 
principle. It surely does not raise the great histo- 
rian of Athenian democracy in our estimation when 
we learn that in his last days his faith in free institu- 
tions was shaken because the majority of the Amer- 
ican people showed such tenacious fidelity to the 
great principles on which all free governments must 
rest. 

In asserting so strongly that the distinctive polit- 
ical function of the educated class, in a community 
governed by discussion, is discharged less at the 
ballot-box, or in the, technical duties of administra- 
tion, than in shaping public opinion, let me not seem 
to argue for the release of any portion of the body 
politic from their personal obligations as citizens. I 
am not unmindful of the benefit that results from the 
direct participation of every educated man in poli- 
tics, — the more generous direction of political ac- 
tion, the elevation of political discussion, the whole- 
some correction of political methods which his 
presence ought to imply. I do not mean that the 
educated class should dwell apart ; on the contrary 



64 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

I hail it as a cheering sign when the representatives 
of this class replace in our political machinery the 
mere party politician. But I am not the less per- 
suaded that the supreme service of the educated 
man is rather indirect than direct, — rendered less 
in his limited capacity as a constituent part of the 
body politic than in his broad and comprehensive 
relations as a member of society. I would not utter 
a word to detain him from the primary meeting or 
the political convention ; but in neither of these can 
his distinguishing parts be called into most efficient 
play. In the primary meeting he is too often sur- 
prised by a packed majority ; on the floor of the 
convention he finds himself thwarted by the tricks 
of the wily parliamentary tactician. It is only in the 
indirect and slower process of appealing to public 
opinion that the ultimate vindication of truth and 
justice is assured ; and it is precisely in his fitness 
to make this appeal that the educated man — the 
man educated in the ample sense in which I have 
defined the term — stands head and shoulders above 
his fellows. He is a spiritual power in the state that 
no factions can outwit, that no majorities can over- 
whelm. He makes himself felt in a sphere where 
the vulgar conditions of political action no longer 
operate, — 

" No private, but a person raised 
With strength sufficient and command from heaven." 

And how false to history their view who hold that 
in a democratic community, or, in other words, in a 
community governed by reason and discussion, such 
a man can be stripped of any legitimate influence ! 
I will not appeal to the familiar and splendid argu- 
ment of antiquity, — for it may be objected that 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 6$ 

political equality then invariably had slavery as its 
corner-stone. — but will limit myself to modern 
examples. Where, let me ask, did the earliest 
impulses of distinctive modern civilization show 
themselves but in the democratic communes of the 
Middle Age .? The movement towards equality of 
classes here initiated marked the beginning of the 
great mediaeval Renaissance. What, indeed, were 
the famous mediaeval universities, in their formal 
organization, but applications of that fruitful prin- 
ciple of corporate action which the free towns pro- 
tected against the encroachments of feudalism } The 
venerable terms "university" and "college" are 
simply survivals of the far more ancient municipal 
fraternities. Bologna and Paris and Oxford were, 
in fact, free commonwealths, creations throughout 
of a popular impulse, memorable protests against 
the isolation of man from man. Macaulay has 
noted as an inconsistency in Milton, that while his 
opinions were democratic his imagination delighted 
to revel amid the illusions of aristocratic society: 
alleging in proof the contrast between the Treatises 
on Prelacy and the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical 
architecture in // Penseroso. But the instincts of 
the poet were right ; there was no discord whatever 
between his reason and his taste. The most distinc- 
tive products of mediaeval architecture, — those soar- 
ing spires, those tranquil fronts of fretted stone that 
hush the murmuring surge of the thronged market- 
place, those 

" Storied windows, richly dight, 
Casting a dim, religious light/' — 

all had a democratic origin. The long-drawn aisles 
of Chartres, of Rouen, of Amiens, of Beauvais, the 
5 



^^^ THE ALIENATION OF THE 

vast structures in which the common people could 
assemble around the episcopal throne, were popular 
protests against monastic and baronial exclusiveness. 
The cloister had no longer the monopoly of art. 
Investigation and experiment were substituted for 
tradition. The pointed style of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, in which the architectural taste and structural 
skill of the mediaeval builders were united in their 
consummate perfectness, was not an ecclesiastical 
and aristocratic but a lay and democratic style. Its 
novel and surpassing forms were direct embodiments 
of the new aspirations throbbing in lay society. 
The laity alone, from their readiness to adopt ra- 
tional methods, were competent to execute these 
surprising works. Viollet-le-Duc does not hesitate 
to say that the period included in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries is the most instructive in the 
history of art, for the simple reason that it was the 
expression of a movement provoked by the lay spirit 
acting against tradition ; and the lay spirit of that 
age was simply another name for the spirit of the 
free towns. 

I would not depreciate the debt we owe to the 
ecclesiastical and the aristocratic institutions of the 
Middle Age. Who can forget the monastic scholar, 
feeding the lamp of learning through the dark night 
of ignorance and barbarism } Who can refuse to 
recognize the seeds of generous and polite sentiment 
hid under the rough crust of feudal society t Who 
of us has not felt the romantic charm of a life so 
removed from anything with which we come in con- 
tact in this new world t I recall the rapture of old 
vacation rambles by famous streams where 

" A splendor falls on castle walls, 
And snowy summits old in story," 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 6/ 

when every thrilled sense and spell of song and le- 
gend was quickened by the companionship of one 
who ranked with the noblest of those whom yonder 
walls commemorate, but still I cannot forget that 
the intellectual revival of Europe received its most 
powerful impulse, not from the priest, nor from the 
noble, but from the citizen. It was from social con- 
ditions essentially like our own, that modern civiU- 
zation sprang, and when we are sneered at as a 
gigantic middle-class experiment, when we are told 
that the theory of equality on which our institutions 
rest can result only in the dismal mediocrity of 
Chinese civilization, in the unbroken level of a West- 
ern prairie, let us call to mind the cheering words 
of Schiller, that the creator of modern culture was 
the middle class. If the past has any lesson to 
teach us on this point it is the lesson of encourage- 
ment and hope. If we have anything to learn from 
experience, it is, before all else, the lesson that 
when political institutions rest on public opinion, 
when the final appeal lies to the reason and intelli- 
gence of men, when, above all, the great majority are 
prepared by a widely diffused common education to 
entertain this appeal, to pass a judgment on the great 
issues continually brought before them, the educated 
class, the shapers and instructors of public opinion, 
sit on a throne of state beside which the common 
seat of kings seems idle pomp ! 

With this interpretation of the distinctive sphere 
of the educated class, how enlarged the scope of 
their influence. In its practical operation so much 
more moral than legal, that influence is no longer 
fettered by the limitations which the mere form of 
government imposes. For the primary relation of 



68 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

the educated man is not to the technical duties 
of the citizen, but to the whole life of the nation. 
His hand may seldom touch the visible cranks and 
levers, but he calls into action the vital forces by 
which the vast engine of state is kept in motion. 
He sweeps over a wide range of questions with 
which the mere politician never comes in contact. 
The laws may assign bounds to political action, but 
they can interpose no check to the operation of pub- 
lic opinion ; they are but mile-stones that mark so- 
cial and political progress. In a representative sys- 
tem the formal constitution must conform to the 
growth of public opinion, for this is the wisdom by 
which the house is builded, by which its seven pil- 
lars must be hewn out. To the bar of public opin- 
ion, the august tribunal of public reason, all ques- 
tions that affect man in his relations with his fellow 
man may be brought. The contrast between the 
dreary stagnation of a despotism and the animating 
stir of a free state is simply the result of the princi- 
ple that a free, and above all, a representative gov- 
ernment must be a progressive realization of ideas. 
Its existence is an existence of conflict and en- 
deavor ; it implies strenuous service, and imposes 
inexorable responsibilities. But while the form of 
government in a free state of necessity is plastic, 
yet as the life of the nation is continuous, its pres- 
ent action must have constant reference to its pre- 
vious history. The conditions of healthy growth 
are violated if at any time it be rudely uprooted 
from its own past. In what line of amendment it 
may wisely move must be decided from its own 
traditions, and it is especially in the wise inter- 
pretation and useful application of these traditions 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 69 

that the influence of an educated class makes itself 
felt. 

As thus dealing with ideas rather than with insti- 
tutions, with the essential life of the nation rather 
than with its mere machinery of administration, the 
educated class in a free state renders its most ines- 
timable service as the exponent and upholder of 
those spiritual forces on which society ultimately 
rests. And here we touch truths of vital moment. 
Though the maxim of Winthrop be no longer true, 
in any literal application, that the civil state is reared 
out of the churches, yet the principle is eternally 
and unchangeably true, that in the deeper life of the 
nation the spiritual and the temporal can never be 
divided. The mere government may be secular, but 
the state is built on everlasting moral foundations. 
We may do away with an established church, but 
we can never emancipate ourselves from the re- 
straints and obligations of Christian civilization ; 
they are part of our history, they are inwrought into 
our being, we cannot deny them without destroying 
our identity as a people ! For in its deepest analy- 
sis the state is a moral person ; in no other way 
could it serve as the agent and minister of that be- 
neficent Providence by which history is invested 
with a moral order, and rendered luminous with an 
increasing purpose. However in common and lim- 
ited transactions we may discriminate between the 
spiritual and the temporal, we cannot do so when 
dealing with those supreme interests and relations, 
from which the ultimate ends of human action and 
the sanctions of civil society derive their meaning. 
The life of a nation, like the life of an individual, 
forms an indivisible whole. The soul is one, and 



70 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

all voluntary acts of a moral being must be spiritual 
acts. We cannot at one moment be spiritual be- 
ings, and at the next be released from spiritual re- 
straints ; now subject to law and now a law unto 
ourselves ! The principle of the separation of 
church and state receives an unwarranted and most 
pernicious interpretation, when it is understood to 
mean, as it so often is, that religion and politics 
occupy two wholly distinct provinces. Much, I 
know, has been said of the non-political character 
of early Christianity, but the relation of the primi- 
tive Christians to external society was exceptional ; 
they were subjects of a state based on antagonistic 
beliefs, and were hemmed in on every hand with 
corrupt pagan institutions. But as the Gospel grad- 
ually refashioned society, this relation was changed ; 
the church found its most efficient ally in that sec- 
ular arm which had so cruelly crushed it ; and re- 
ligious conviction, instead of alienating men from 
political duties, became the most powerful spur to 
political action. Rothe, indeed, has argued that 
Christianity is essentially a political principle, and 
that it is the destiny of all distinctive ecclesiastical 
organizations to be finally absorbed into a Christian 
state. 

Throughout the early period of our own history 
the only educated class were the ministers of re- 
ligion. To furnish the churches with trained teach- 
ers was the main purpose for which our most ven- 
erable institutions of learning were founded. While 
the clergy no longer hold this exceptional rank they 
still form a numerous and conspicuous part of our 
educated class, and, so far as concerns the shaping 
of popular opinion, doubtless its most influential 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. /I 

part. They touch the deepest chords of popular 
sentiment as no other agency does. And if it be 
true that the state is but the embodiment of this 
popular sentiment, that its action is inevitably 
shaped by the convictions which the great body of 
the people come from time to time to cherish as 
right and true, what duty can rest upon the pulpit 
more sacred and more imperative than the duty of 
subjecting this popular sentiment to the discipline 
of religious belief 1 Even what is termed specula- 
tive opinion cannot be set aside as unimportant, for 
no earnest, efficient action, no action aiming at large 
and beneficent results, can be severed from specula- 
tive opinion. From speculative opinion all the vital 
movements of society take their shape. Mr. Burke, 
in a brilliant passage, has declared that Politics and 
the Pulpit have very little in common, but it was 
the Puritan pulpit which created the noblest type 
of the republican citizen. 

And in this trying crisis through which we now 
are passing, when a cup of humiliation and shame 
is pressed to our lips such as we were not forced 
to drink in the darkest hour when treason stalked 
abroad, to whom shall we look to quicken our slug- 
gish moral sense, to diffuse a more sober temper, 
to inspire a more genuine reverence for things that 
are true, honest, lovely, and of good report, rather 
than to the ministers of religion ? Who but they 
can educate that public will which, Sismondi tells 
us, '' is the sum of all the wills, of all the intelli- 
gence, of all the virtue of the nation " ? What voice 
but theirs shall bid that storm to rise which shall 
sweep forever away the whole abhorred crew that 
have swarmed like unclean birds to the seats of 
power, — 



72 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

" Conspiring to uphold their state 
By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends 
For which our country is a name so dear " ? 

I cannot but think that our American Christianity 
has come, of late years, to concern itself too exclu- 
sively with private and social needs, and has lost 
the masculine hold it once had on public duties. 
In enforcing the fear of God in '' civil things," no 
minister of the gospel need for a moment think that 
he is falling below the highest level of his official 
duty. Who but looks back with veneration to the 
New England minister of the olden time, — like 
Ward, of Ipswich, whose vigorous and well-furnished 
intellect could turn from the composition of sermons 
to the drawing up of a "■ Body of Liberties," — like 
many of a later day, who, in the genuine tradition 
of the fathers, refused to call any human duties 
common or unclean. Nay, are not some of the most 
brilliant memories of this anniversary associated 
with one whose course has but just ended, — one 
in whom the sinewy fibre of the past generation 
was singularly blended with the grace, the sweet- 
ness, the insight of the new, — who, while exploring 
the innermost mysteries of spiritual experience, 
could discuss with unrivaled force the true wealth 
and weal of nations ? Known to the world as a 
preacher and theologian, he was not less known to 
his neighbors as a wise and zealous and public- 
spirited citizen ; and when they sought to console 
his dying moments by ordaining that the fair park 
which owed its existence to his foresight should 
bear his name, they surely did not deem that Bush- 
nell had in aught degraded religion while enforcing 
such earnest conviction of the sacredness of politi- 
cal duties. 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 73 

But in proof of my position that, in a community 
governed by discussion, the most wholesome and 
potent influence of the educated man is indepen- 
dent of political office, I need not turn from your 
own rolL Since your last anniversary the oldest 
graduate of this university has passed away. From 
the long procession which yesterday for the first 
time entered these doors the most venerable figure 
was missing. Deriving his early nurture from these 
springs, his long and useful and honorable career 
was passed in a distant city. In youth a scholar of 
fairest promise, yet never coveting mere intellectual 
gains as the highest acquisition, — achieving at the 
bar the foremost rank at a time when the leaders of 
the Philadelphia bar, to whom he stood opposed, 
would have graced Westminster Hall in its palmiest 
days, — instructing the bench with the research, the 
discrimination, the perspicuity of his arguments ; 
and, while devoted to his profession, never relaxing 
his love of letters, — a proficient in the literatures 
of France and Spain, delighting in history and poe- 
try, a close student of theology, — he was much 
more than lawyer, much more than scholar. Al- 
ways, with one brief exception, declining political 
office, indifferent to the honors which only waited 
his acceptance, he furnished a crowning proof of 
his eager interest in political issues and his unflag- 
ging zeal for the public welfare when, at the age of 
fourscore, he issued from his well-earned retirement 
to uphold the pillars of the state ; and in the un- 
flinching courage with which he more than once 
faced and conquered a perverted public sentiment, 
he merited the tribute paid by the greatest Athenian 
historian to the greatest Athenian statesman, that 



74 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

" powerful from dignity of character as well as from 
wisdom, and conspicuously above the least tinge of 
corruption, he held back the people with a free hand, 
and was their real leader instead of being led by 
them." Such is the sway of wisdom, of courage, of 
unsullied integrity. We live in evil days ; ominous 
clouds lower on our political horizon ; but when I 
behold the unsought homage paid to a private citi- 
zen like Horace Binney I gather new hope for the 
republic. 

Is not the fashioning of such a man the crowning 
achievement of a great university like this } Let 
me not seem to disparage the wider scope which our 
time has given to university training. I heartily 
applaud the extended significance of liberal studies ; 
I rejoice in the enriched apparatus of discovery, in 
the multiplied and exhilarating solicitations to re- 
search. I would throw these portals wide open to 
all investigation, yet still remembering that in the 
history of Higher Education the liberal arts were the 
precursors of special and professional studies, and 
that admirable culture of whatever kind must have 
its roots in the moral sentiment, I am unshaken in 
the conviction that a seat of liberal discipline fulfills 
its noblest functions in the rearing of wise, magnan- 
imous, public-spirited men, — of men not merely 
equipped for specific pursuits, but accustomed to the 
most generous recognition of the responsibilities 
resting upon man as man. Where, indeed, can we 
look for such but to our seats of learning } and 
where so much as to such a seat of learning as this } 
— a seat whose years remind us that the sources 
of our national life lie far back of the centennial 
period which we are this year commemorating ; the 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 75 

first ever founded by a free people through their 
elected representatives ; linked, in its earliest days 
with the statesman 

" Than whom a better ne'er held 
The helm of Rome ; " 

which hastened our independence by half a century ; 
which bears on its long catalogue the names of so 
many public men, of so many patriots, of so many 
heroes. Let Harvard cherish letters ; let her foster 
the sciences ; let her lead in extending on every 
hand the frontiers of knowledge ; but let it be her 
chiefest glory, in the future, as in the past, to be 
called the Mother of Men. Let her sons as they 
survey these stately piles, as from year to year they 
delight to walk about her, to tell her towers, and 
consider her palaces, still repeat, as their proudest 
boast, — 

" Hie locus insignes magnosque creavit alumnos." 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC 
CULTURE. 

AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 
OF AMHERST COLLEGE, JULY 6, 1869. 



I COUNT myself happy in coming before you fur- 
nished with a subject to which your sympathies are 
already pledged. The occasion suggests a theme. 
Surely we may accept it as an auspicious sign that 
the tie between the graduate and his alma mater has 
ceased to be merely nominal. These annual gath- 
erings are invigorated with new life, as we come 
more and more to view them as arenas for the dis- 
cussion of whatever concerns the supreme academic 
interests. As conservators of these interests we 
can tolerate no narrower interpretation of our func- 
tion. We are here to take care that the republic of 
letters receives no harm. And at a time when the 
foremost minds among us are earnestly grappling 
with one problem it would imperil the highest uses 
of this hour to divert your thoughts to any other. 
Confident that your appreciation of the subject will 
supplement my shortcomings, I shall ask you to 
consider the Method of Academic Culture. 

Before such a company as this I may assume the 
existence of a distinctive academic discipline. Well 
nigh seventy years have, indeed, elapsed since Schel- 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. // 

ling, in the famous lectures which he gave to Jena, 
said that a youth in pursuit of liberal culture was 
adrift on a boundless sea without star or compass, 
and still, after this long interval, we find the histo- 
rian of Elizabeth, in his inaugural oration at St. 
Andrews, declaring, in almost the same strain, that 
the great schools and colleges of England were in 
the midst of a revolution which, like most revolu- 
tions, meant discontent with what they had, with no 
clear idea of what they wanted. Yet this unprom- 
ising result need not make us waver in the faith 
that there is an aim and scope of education more 
complete than mere acquisition of knowledge or 
technical skill ; and in the rush and pressure of this 
modern age, hemmed in with material wants and 
triumphs, begirt with paltry expedients of politics 
and trade, we gather to-night about the old altars, 
to confess ourselves the worshippers of this peren- 
nial Truth and Beauty. 

It is proof of wholesome progress that, of late, 
the controversy respecting education has changed 
its front. The old babbling about useful knowledge 
is now well nigh banished to the baser sort. Both 
parties have seen at length that the ineffectual de- 
bate between the advocates of classical and of scien- 
tific training was wide of the real mark. A mere 
classical pedant like Dr. Moberly may avow with- 
out a blush that he does not know in what the dis- 
ciplinary value of the sciences consists, or a mere 
intellectual gladiator, like Mr. Robert Lowe, may 
find a pleasure in measuring his strength with the 
mother from whose breasts he drew it, but more 
liberal minds are coming to loathe this false antag- 
onism. The great high priest of the utilitarian 



78 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

philosophy has shamed Oxford's ungrateful son with 
his appreciative estimate of classical study, while 
at the same time the most intelligent advocates of 
scientific training rest the distinctive claims of the 
sciences to form a part of education, on their disci- 
plinary power. They hold to intellectual culture as 
the chief end, thus conceding the position on which 
the defenders of the classical discipline have stood 
from the beginning. Mr. Atkinson, in his spirited 
assault on the great schools of England, frankly 
confesses this. But while both sides have taken the 
only sound and tenable position, that the compara- 
tive value of all studies must be measured by this 
common standard, the important fact is not over- 
looked that the strain and tendency of the two 
methods remain essentially distinct. Says the re- 
cently elected President of Harvard University, who 
has earned the praise of stating more fairly than any 
other what the new education may be expected to 
accomplish : — 

" Between this course and the ordinary semi-classical 
course, there is no question of information by the one 
and formation by the other j of cramming utilitarian facts 
by one system, and developing mental powers by the 
other. Both courses form, train, and educate the mind, 
and one no more than the other, only the disciplines are 
different. The fact is that the whole toae and spirit of a 
good college ought to be different in kind from that of a 
good polytechnic or scientific school." 

Such an admission from such a source has a sig- 
nificance that cannot be overlooked. Had this es- 
sential distinction between the college and the sci- 
entific school been always borne in mind "we might 
have been saved much wild experimenting. I make 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 79 

it the starting point of this discussion. This distinc- 
tion will not, however, avail us much if we fail to 
reach an adequate conception of what culture means. 
For if by culture we understand no more than the 
word is often taken to imply, the formal training of 
the intellectual powers, the question between the 
classics and the sciences is not worth the ink that 
has been wasted on it. If we value the study of an- 
cient languages, or the study of modern sciences, 
simply as mental whetstones on which to sharpen 
youthful wits, there is no need to set one against 
the other. The utility of both has been amply vin- 
dicated. Surely no one would deem the time was 
wasted that the younger Pitt spent in translating 
the rhapsody of Lycophron, or that Peel was idle 
when as a boy he used to sit on the stone steps of 
Harrow school-house, and while the bell was ring- 
ing write Greek verses for his playmates. And in 
his memorable speech in introducing the Irish 
Church Bill, certainly the most marvelous intellect- 
ual display that the British parliament has seen dur- 
ing the present generation, Mr. Gladstone has abun- 
dantly demonstrated the value of that early disci- 
pline which Eton and Oxford gave him. On the 
other hand, the pure disciplinary uses of scientific 
study can hardly be overestimated. The mere in- 
tellectual powers are nowhere more highly taxed. 
Whatever opinion we may form of such methods of 
dealing with the natural sciences as Mr. Wilson 
tells us he has been practicing for the past eight 
years at Rugby, the truth of Mill's maxim is indis- 
putable that in the higher physical investigations 
"reasoning and observation have been carried to 
their greatest known perfection." It is absurd to 



80 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

say that such studies do not furnish an intellectual 
discipline of the highest order. If, therefore, the 
mere formal training of the mental parts be made 
the chief aim, there is no question between the 
classics and the sciences that need cause a long 
dispute. 

But can the meaning of culture be thus restricted .^ 
In other words does the value of a study reside 
chiefly in the intellectual strain required to master 
it, or is there beyond all this some vital and fruitful 
relation between its subject matter and the acquir- 
ing mind } Is there not a power to inspire as well 
as a power to train } If effort only be the aim, there 
might seem some show of reason in the rule of an 
English teacher that a study is good just in the pro- 
portion that it is dry and disagreeable. To stop 
with this is a hopeless confusion of means and ends. 
Mere mental training, however nice or rigorous, 
must remain but the threshold of genuine culture. 
No matter whether it be the discipline of the observ- 
ing or of the reflecting powers, no matter whether 
acquired by dealing with words or things, with the 
critical comparisons of language, or the analytical 
processes of science, if we do not go beyond this 
we content ourselves with a theory of education 
which Montaigne might correct. '' The advantages 
of our study," he says, "are to become better and 
wiser." 

Not that we would in the least underrate fine in- 
tellectual discipline, but it is always the means, not 
the end. Even when this intellectual discipline is 
put to its final use in the mastery of new truth, it is 
yet far short of culture in the highest sense. For 
mere intellectual activity may be vain and profitless, 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 8 1 

and earn at last the bitter verdict, " all is vanity and 
vexation of spirit." The most varied training of the 
reasoning powers, the most far-reaching and all-em- 
bracing application of them, may still fail to touch 
the great circumference of spiritual completeness. 
Culture is the aspiration for all things that may be 
desired. Its aim is the perfect man. It is realized 
not in any one-sided development of human nature, 
nor in the exclusive recognition of one kind of truth, 
but in the happy, harmonious play of all spiritual 
energies, in the pursuit of whatever things are true, 
honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Thus 
it has its origin not in scientific curiosity, still less 
in petty social pride ; its true source is man's insa- 
tiable longing to be made complete in the image of 
the infinite perfection. "The foundation of culture," 
says Emerson, ^^ is the moral sentiment." 

This complete inclusion of man's nature within 
the scope of culture at once renders culture vital and 
dynamic. It is not the mere perception by the mind 
of the true order, but the conforming of the whole 
nature to it. The cultivated man is not the man 
who has mastered truth, but the man who has been 
mastered by it ; the man in whose soul the love of 
truth is the sovereign principle ; whose inner citadel 
of reason and desire is garrisoned with all noble and 
just and rational convictions ; whose feet are swift to 
run in the pathway of gracious and magnanimous 
acts. Mr. Bright has sneered at culture as a smat- 
tering of a little Latin and less Greek. It is not 
this ; nor is it all the knowledge of Latin and Greek 
possessed by Porson or Bentley, or all the knowledge 
of the physical sciences possessed by Oersted or Far- 
aday. It is measured not by any variety or extent 
6 



82 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

of acquisition ; it is in the man. All intellectual ac- 
quisition is tributary to it, all the faculties do its 
behests, yet these all are but 

" The shapes the masking spirit wears." 

Culture sucks the sweetness from all laws, from all 
civilization. Apprehended in its true meaning, all 
things that men have sought after are its ministering 
servants. Not mind alone, but will, emotion, sensi- 
bility are the material with which it works. It com- 
bines them all in prolific alliance. It bears its fruit 
in the indestructible harvest of sweet and beautiful 
souls. In this sense culture is its own end. It is 
self-sufficing and final. To possess it is to realize 
the chief good of life. Nor is it merely the aspira- 
tion for individual perfection. Resting on the benign 
principle that we are members one of another, and 
that the perfection of human nature, as it is the as- 
piration for one eternal truth and beauty, can only 
be realized in the unity of one body, culture is not 
selfish but social, not exclusive but comprehensive, 
not individual but catholic. A divine judgment on 
every forced and mechanical method of reform, it is 
the main-spring of all effectual philanthropy. ''The 
men of culture," says Matthew Arnold, " are the true 
apostles of equality." 

With this definition of culture, there is no need of 
showing that in any method not the form alone but 
the subject matter must be of prime importance. 
The question as to the comparative value of certain 
courses becomes not merely a question as to their 
disciplinary power ; we must also ask by which study 
is the mind brought into most fruitful contact with 
noble, inspiring, stimulating truth. If it be the final 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 83 

object of a complete and generous education to 
achieve so far as we may this ideal of compact and 
proportioned character, plainly those studies must 
have the preference which touch the mind in its 
most vital parts, and waken it to most harmonious 
action. And these must be truths which appeal to 
the spiritual sense ; truths not of form and relation, 
but of essence; not of inanimate, unconscious nature, 
but of life and feeling ; truths not of expedient ap- 
plication to mere present needs, reaching no inter- 
ests beyond the range of things seen and temporal ; 
but truths of the supersensuous, eternal world, 
"truths which wake to perish never." 

" Greatness of style in painting," says Ruskin, " is 
always in exact proportion to nobleness of subject." 
The rule holds just as well in education, for culture 
in its highest stage is simply genial assimilation. It 
is only when commercing with the highest truth that 
the soul is touched to its finest issues. Never can 
culture wrest itself from this alliance with the su- 
preme interests of humanity. It ceases to be the 
expression of completeness and harmony soon as it 
shuts its eyes to this horizon. The ultramontane De 
Maistre did not exaggerate this principle when he 
claimed that educational not less than social institu- 
tions must rest on the principles of all existence ; 
and Niebuhr laid down a principle more profound 
and far-reaching than himself, perhaps, perceived, 
when, writing to Madame Hensler about the educa- 
tion of his boy, he said, with a sad sincerity, *' I shall 
nurture in him from infancy a firm faith in all that 
I have lost." As the law of culture is centrality, so 
it can never be gained when the true centre is lost 
sight of. 



84 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

Does it seem the mere summing up of our discus- 
sion to say, with J. Stuart Mill, that education has for 
its object, "besides calling forth the greatest possi- 
ble quantity of intellectual power, to inspire the in- 
tensest love of truth." But the question still re- 
mains, in relation to what truth is this most intense 
love exerted ? In the perception of what relations 
and affinities are these inmost springs of being 
touched, and the soul thrilled, absorbed, enraptured, 
with its vision ? In contact with what superior forces 
are these tides of feeling at their flood ? There may 
be joy in the perception of mere mathematical rela- 
tions, as Newton, when he drew near the demonstra- 
tion of his great law, was overpowered by his emo- 
tion ; the mind may be exalted by tracing the broad 
operation of physical principles, as Kepler cried with 
rapture, " I read thy thoughts after thee, O God : ' 
yet who will question that the intensest feeling can 
be aroused only with reference to those questions of 
the soul that are linked to the eternal poles of the 
spiritual firmament. 

It is this that draws the ineradicable line between 
literature and science as sources of a complete and 
noble culture. Remember it is no question here as 
to their disciplinary power, but as to their capacity 
to furnish this living bread which must form the diet 
of all generous souls. It is not the form but the sub- 
stance that now concerns us. Judged by this rule 
the sciences must be assigned a lower relative posi- 
tion, as failing to lead the mind to the most invigo- 
rating springs of spiritual culture ; and a method of 
discipline in which the sciences are made predom- 
inant can never be relied on to achieve the highest 
end. I am far from wishing to deny the sciences all 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 85 

moral and esthetic influence, but where this influ- 
ence can be most clearly traced it will be always 
found that the spirit of rigid scientific method has 
been qualified by convictions drawn from an inde- 
pendent source. That sense in nature of " some- 
thing far more deeply interfused," which is one of 
the prime characteristics of modern in distinction 
from ancient literature, is, in fact, a protest of the 
spiritual nature against the materialistic tendency of 
modern science. 

So far as science comes into contact with the great 
problems of humanity, it holds a two-fold attitude. 
In the first place it ignores religion altogether, re- 
stricting the study of man's spiritual relations to 
those ties and obligations simply that connect him 
with his fellow-man ; the position of Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, to whose cheerless attempts to coordinate 
the sciences might be applied the words of an old 
writer, " that like Ulysses wandering through the 
shades, he met all the ghosts, but could not see the 
queen." For he not only rejects as failures all at- 
tempts to cross the confines of phenomena, he goes 
to the limit of denying that the human mind has any 
capacity for apprehending a supreme cause. He 
does not even rise to the level of worshipping an 
Unknown God. And in professing this dismal creed 
it is past doubt that Mr. Spencer does not speak for 
himself alone. A second position, but one hardly in 
advance of this, is when Mr. Mill generously con- 
cedes that Theism, "under certain conditions/' is still 
an open question. ''The positive mode of thought," 
says he, ''is not necessarily a denial of the supernat- 
ural ; it merely thro\vs back that question to the 
origin of things. The positive philosopher is free to 



S6 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

give his opinion on this subject, according to the 
weight he attaches to the analogies, which are called 
marks of design, and to the general traditions of the 
human race : the value of these evidences is indeed 
a question for Positive philosophy, but it is not one 
in which Positive philosophers must necessarily be 
agreed." Mr. Mill admits, therefore, no nearer ap- 
proach to Deity than through the inference from de- 
sign, or external evidence. " In his general philoso- 
phy," says Masson, '' he provides no room or func- 
tion whatever for belief as distinct from knowledge." 
And who that recalls the tone of unconsoled, com- 
fortless sorrow that sighs through the dedication 
of his essay upon Liberty to the memory of his de- 
ceased wife can doubt that, to this capacious and 
highly trained understanding, the truths which min- 
ister the most serene and beneficent discipline to 
the soul are indeed open questions. 

That these carefully expressed opinions of the two 
foremost English writers who have discussed the 
logical connections of the sciences must be accepted 
as a fair exposition of the most advanced specula- 
tive opinion among scientific men of the present 
day will be doubted by no reader of Huxley or Dar- 
win. The unmistakable tone of both is indifference 
toward those truths which science cannot readily 
coordinate. This position at times is temperately 
implied, at times arrogantly asserted, but the result 
in either case remains the same. It is no exagger- 
ation to affirm that the study of the physical sciences, 
as the scope and limits of that study are expounded 
by some of its most eminent professors, excludes 
the mind from the highest and most pressing ques- 
tions that concern man as an immortal being. And 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 8/ 

a student whose mental diet is drawn exclusively or 
mainly from these sources must inevitably miss the 
most vitalizing sources of intellectual culture. The 
spirit is hopelessly dwarfed on which these shackles 
have once been fastened. 

''There are," as the Duke of Argyll most truly 
says, "many kinds of priestcraft." In behalf of 
science some men seem on the point of putting forth 
an " Index Expurgatorius " of scientific study. It 
furnishes an instructive lesson to find one of the 
loudest advocates of intellectual freedom laying 
down the rule that "■ whatever is inaccessible to rea- 
son should be strictly interdicted to research." But 
who shall sit on this high tribunal ; who shall draw 
the line where reason ends .? Alas ! there are 
''slaves of thought" as well as "slaves of sense," 
chambers of darkness, in which the soul may wan- 
der, more dismal than any dungeon in which the 
body can be immured. Of all servitude there is 
none so grinding as servitude to a system of ideas, 
when the reason, proud, self-satisfied, boasting its 
emancipation from all vulgar prejudice, repelling 
with scorn dependence upon any higher guidance, 
is all the time hopelessly chained by its own proc- 
esses, weighed down with fetters 

" Forged by the imperious, lonely, thinking power." 

Even when physical science does not assume this 
despotic right of legislation respecting the Hmits of 
intellectual activity, it may equally sap the highest 
culture by tempting the soul to lower ranges of in- 
quiry. This point need not be argued ; we may 
appeal to history. If the end and use of literary 
history be, as Bacon has declared, " not so much 



8S THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

. for curiosity or satisfaction of those that are the 
lovers of learning ; but chiefly for a more serious 
and grave purpose, which is that it will make learned 
men wise in the use and administration of learning," 
we may gain a lesson from the Italian universities. 
In the fourteenth century Italy had the intellectual 
preeminence which in the twelfth had belonged to 
France. But the institutions which had been cen- 
tres of living thought became, after the Reforma- 
tion, mere scientific schools. They boast a continu- 
ous series of illustrious names, but, with the single 
exception of Vico, illustrious only in one direction. 
Says Matthew Arnold : " It shows how insufficient 
are the natural sciences alone to keep up in a peo- 
ple culture and life, that the Italians, at the end of 
a period with the natural sciences alone thriving in 
it, and letters and philosophy moribund, found them- 
selves, by their own confession, with a poverty of 
general culture, and in an atmosphere unpropitious 
to knowledge, which they sorrowfully contrast with 
the condition of other and happier nations." 

Is it said, on the other hand, that the method of 
scientific culture is very different now from what it 
was in the days of Galileo and Torricelli ; I an- 
swer, the method has been improved, but the sub- 
ject matter, with which alone the present discussion 
is concerned, remains the same. The instruments 
of investigation are more perfect, but the field itself 
has not been enlarged. In its widest scope science 
aims simply at finding a theory of nature ; its last 
word is impersonal, inexorable law. The more com- 
plete the absorption of the intellect in purely scien- 
tific methods, the more complete the severance from 
all spiritual intuitions. To the soul imprisoned 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 89 

within these processes the '^ flameittia mosnia mim- 
di" are walls of brass. Huxley, like Hume, can 
find no refuge from materialism but in skepticism. 
Science yields him no more sohd ground than this. 
The most ringing protest against this absorbing 
tyranny, in modern times, of the scientific spirit is 
seen in the wonderful development of modern music. 
Here the esthetic sensibilities escape the sway of 
the understanding. The part of man's nature that 
science does not touch and cannot arouse struggles 
for expression. ''Music," says Taine, "is the or- 
gan of the over-refined sensibility, and vague, bound- 
less aspiration of modern life." That refuge from 
the limitations of corroding every-day existence 
which coarse natures seek in coarse excitements, 
is furnished the more cultivated mind in the en- 
chanting melodies of " Orpheus," in the profound 
sadness that underlies the impetuous movement of 
''Don Giovanni," and in the hnked sweetness of 
''Fidelio." The serene domain of fancy and imagi- 
nation which the lively Greek possessed in the fair 
humanities of old religion now lingers in the mod- 
ern world of tones ; where the dim feeling of the 
soul for things not dreamed of in earth-born phi- 
losophies finds such fit embodiment. Indeed, as I 
stood the other day with the great multitude which 
the Jubilee had gathered, and caught the dense waves 
of sound which beat on the air with almost the so- 
lidity of Atlantic billows, it seemed far less a festi- 
val of Peace than the fleeing of men and women 
from that sway of the Common, which, says Goethe, 
binds us all. Against such wants science can fur- 
nish no antidote. On the contrary, science has 
most in common with these tendencies of a mate- 



90 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

rialistic civilization. Science addresses the under- 
standing. Along her straight and even path the 
mind runs with swiftness and precision, but never 
soars. Her graded course shuns heights and depths 
alike. Shut up in her luxurious cars the traveler 
speeds to his journey's end, unconscious that during 
the night he has had the glitter of the Northern 
Lights above him or the boiling surges of Niagara 
beneath. Science discusses Force and Method, but 
says nothing of God, Freedom, and Immortality. 
She leads us to the tree of Knowledge ; not to the 
tree of Life. 

The distinction and supreme excellence, consid- 
ered as a part of academic method, of what were 
aptly termed, in former times, the " Litteras Hu- 
maniores," consist in this contact which they fur- 
nish with the central and indestructible interests 
of the soul. There is, after all, no such music in 
the spheres as the " still, sad music of humanity." 
How undying are these wants ! The oldest book 
that time has spared is fresh and new when looked 
at in this aspect. The problems that troubled the 
patriarchs are the problems that trouble us. The 
circle that began with Job comes round again with 
Faust. The moral and esthetic influence of science 
is limited and indirect, but in converse with litera- 
ture we feel a power that is close and living ; we 
tread the overshadowing verge of the great mys- 
teries that have baffled sages and saints ; our hearts 
throb in unison with all that man has hoped or 
feared ; we wrestle with him in his midnight con- 
flicts with unknown foes ; we pillow our heads be- 
side him, and dream his heavenly dreams. 

Were the study of the classics no more than a 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 91 

school-room drill it might be difficult to show that 
some modern tongues could not be used with the 
same advantage. But surely the tale of Troy divine 
has a higher use than to furnish to the Greek 
grammars painful hsts of exceptions. The highest 
value of all literature is in its substance, not its 
form. Bacon calls it the first distemper of learning 
when men study words. A man may waste years 
in the fruitless labor of wearing out his dictionary, 
and yet die without catching a sound of the infinite 
melody of the many-voiced sea ; while Keats, who 
knew no Greek, by the subtlety of a kindred poetic 
sense, filched some of its fairest flowers from old 
Parnassus. Unless our classical discipline goes be- 
yond m.ere grammatical analysis, we may as well 
dismiss the classics from our curriculum. The doubt- 
ful advantage otherwise derived from them will hard- 
ly compensate for the toil and trouble. Ascham tells 
us that Queen Elizabeth never took Greek or Latin 
grammar in hand after the first declining of a noun 
and a verb. 

Accepting literature in its widest sense as the 
vehicle for expressing the whole varied and subtle 
experience of humanity, including in it whatever of 
genuine and noble utterance, whether in poetry, in 
philosophy, in history, and how ample and manifold 
its material as a means of highest culture ! How high 
its reach, how broad and comprehensive its scope ! 
What shapes it evokes ! What pictures it holds up be- 
fore us ! What joy, what sorrow, what triumph, what 
despair ; what biting accents of doubt and mockery ; 
what angel voices of faith and love ! The anguish 
of Lear ; the troubled conscience of Macbeth ; the 
mental torture of Othello ; the introspection of 



92 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

Hamlet ; do these speak to us in a foreign tongue ? 
The spiritual struggles of Augustine ; the haunted 
rhymes of Dante ; the doubts of Pascal ; the sen- 
timentalism of Rousseau ; what have we in all this 
but ourselves, sketched in larger outlines, and dyed 
in deeper tints ? 

Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks with a sneer of " such 
as care not to understand the architecture of the 
heavens, but are deeply interested in some con- 
temptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary 
Queen of Scots." Had his philosophy gone a little 
deeper he would have guessed the reason. The 
moral laws that appeal to the conscience are more 
vital than the physical laws that are comprehended 
by the intellect. A story of human sorrow and grief 
touches the heart more nearly than any star shining 
in the milky way. In the practical problems before 
us we feel an interest that we cannot feel in any 
question of astronomy. Life and death are more 
mysterious, more awful, than gravitation or chemical 
affinity ; what we are, and what we shall be, we are 
forced to ask ourselves with a solicitude that no in- 
quiry about the origin of species or the law of met- 
amorphosis can ever cause ; heirs of immortal 
hopes, even Mr. Huxley's question whether all pro- 
toplasm be not proteinaceous, does not sum up all 
we want to know ! 

In thus defining the class of studies which must 
form the basis of all high and generous culture, I am 
not unmindful of the fact that some of the studies 
which I have grouped under the broad designation of 
literary, in distinction from scientific, as moral phi- 
losophy and history, admit scientific method, and are 
commonly classed among the sciences. Moral phi- 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 93 

losophy has always held this rank, nor is there any 
reason why it should be refused to history. For if 
not the foundation, history is undeniably the veri- 
fication of the social sciences. Mr. Goldwin Smith, 
with a singular confusion of ideas, complains that 
the founders of the new physical science of history 
have to lay the foundation in what seems the quick- 
sand of free will. '' Let those," says he, " who have 
studied the science of man and history, predict a 
single event by means of these sciences." This ob- 
jection springs from an altogether exaggerated and 
erroneous notion of what science undertakes to do. 
Prediction is, under no circumstances, part of its 
proper function. Science simply discerns a certain 
order, and is only competent to say that in case that 
order be maintained, results that are involved in it 
may be expected. It does not detract from the 
claim of medicine to be called a science that the 
most skillful physician cannot predict the day and 
the hour when some individual patient will be struck 
with sudden death : it does not detract from the 
claim of geology to be called a science that no ob- 
servation of Murchison or Dana could forewarn men 
of the frightful convulsion that devastated South 
America. This line between the physical and moral 
sciences, with reference to prediction, has been al- 
together too loosely drawn. Says a much more 
discriminating thinker than Mr. Goldwin Smith, I 
mean the late Sir Cornewall Lewis : '' Positive poli- 
tics, like anatomy or physiology, does not, properly 
speaking, predict anything, though it furnishes gen- 
eral truths, by which the determination of future 
facts .may be facilitated." History, in this respect, 
differs from the physical sciences chiefly in the fact 
that its phenomena do not repeat themselves. 



94 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

But while I thus claim for history, equally with 
moral philosophy or psychology, the application of 
scientific method, and trace all the advance made in 
this study, in recent times, to the recognition of this 
fact, I am just as much persuaded that the supreme 
and unequaled value of those studies as means of 
culture arises from precisely those features of them 
which are not scientific. It is not because moral 
philosophy and history may be ranked as sciences, 
as Mr. Herbert Spencer and men of his school 
would argue, but because they are much more than 
sciences, and because they introduce the mind to 
the presence of mysteries too august and unfath- 
omable to be brought within the confines of any 
sciences, that their educational influence is so enno- 
bling. So soon as they are reduced to the rank of 
mere sciences we have but the skeleton remaining. 
We are like the poet when he had fetched his sea- 
born treasures home, and found 

" The poor, unsightly, noisome things 
Had left their beauty on the shore, 
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar." 

Take such a system as that of Bain, where moral 
philosophy is merged in psychology, and where 
psychology in turn is rooted in physiology, the inner 
sanctuary of the reason being reduced to a mere 
phantasy of consciousness. Whatever may be the 
merits of such a system as a dry outline map of the 
human faculties, what satisfaction can it afford to a 
mind putting itself those questions which, in its 
deeper moods, it can never fail to put. How does it 
help us to conceive of our thinking, feeling selves as 
only complex bundles of nerve-currents, all diversi- 
ties of knowledge and belief, of character and genius, 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 95 

resulting from their endless action and reaction ? 
What interest would this study of ourselves retain 
were it thus cut off from the deeper ontological 
questions in which, like all the physical sciences, it 
lies imbedded ? 

" Sure, He, that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capabihty and godlike reason 
To fust in us unused." 

Or, take such a view of history as that of the late 
Mr. Buckle, when the imposing range of illustration 
served for a time to veil the shallowness of thought. 
According to this writer, history is simply scientific '- 
" For in the moral," he says, " as in the physical 
world, nothing is anomalous, nothing is unnatural, 
nothing is strange ; all is order, symmetry, and law." 
In other words, there is no interest for us in the 
checkered story of human progress, more touching, 
more profound, than that with which we watch the 
growth of a cactus, or note the pathway of a comet. 
Hence the conditions of human progress are intel- 
lectual, not moral ; the chief concern of the student 
is with tables of statistics ; he can rise no higher 
than the recognition of regular phenomena ; all idea 
of an over-arching destiny, or a directing Provi- 
dence, is scouted as absurd. History is made by 
this method merely a register of such facts as may 
be grouped and classified in some petty system, its 
pages as dry and lifeless and uninspiring as those of 
last year's almanac. 

No one, of course, who admits a progress in the 
history of humanity can deny the presence of some 
controlling principle by which that progress has 
been shaped. But when we say that the course of 



96 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

nature is determined by invariable laws we should 
remember that while those laws are invariable in 
their nature, they are subject to incessant variation 
in their application. History, like nature, is gov- 
erned by variable combinations of invariable forces. 
In this sense law is not, as commonly conceived, an 
adamantine barrier ; it is not rigid, not immutable, 
not invariable; it is plastic, subtle, changeful, these 
endless transformations being determined by a reg- 
nant principle that lies behind the veil of phenomenal 
existence. What we dignify with the name of laws 
are but methods of a supreme will. " The supernat- 
ural order," says Ozanam, ^' rules, enlightens, and 
fertilizes the order of nature," and the principle is 
just as true when applied to history. As the events 
of history are in part results of will, a physical 
theory fails to account even for the physical facts. 

We are all familiar with Aristotle's maxim that poe- 
try is more weighty and philosophical than history ; 
for those of us who have never read it in the original 
must have come across it in the fine paraphrase of Sir 
Philip Sidney. And using the term history in the 
sense in which it is defined in the preface of Polyb- 
ius, the maxim is correct ; for as Sidney puts it, 
" the historian is tied, not to what should be, but to 
what is ; to the particular truth of things ; not to 
the general reason." Yet Revelation has given his- 
tory a meaning which not even Thucidides con- 
ceived. We tread the shores of a new world when 
we turn from the gloomy pages of Tacitus to the 
triumphant visions of Augustine. Bossuet, Vico, 
Bunsen, mark successive phases of a change by 
which history from being a mere discipHne for the 
practical administration of affairs, has become a 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 97 

Study of human destiny, addressed less to the lower 
than to the higher reason ; equally with poetry an 
intuition of the spiritual, the universal, the eter- 
nal. "The highest idea of history," says Schelling, 
"can never be realized through the understanding," 

With this view of history as a progressive, ever 
unfolding verification and illustration of spiritual 
truths, I feel that its influence in giving tone and 
shape to all higher culture can hardly be exagge- 
rated. The true historic spirit will always be a 
liberal, a catholic, but at the same time a humble, a 
reverential spirit. Says Carlyle : " Science has done 
much for us ; but it is a poor science that would 
hide from us the great, deep, sacred infinitude of 
nescience, whither we can never penetrate, upon 
which all science swims as a mere superficial film." 
We learn tolerance as we see how strangely mixed 
in all men's beliefs have been truth and error ; we 
look with distrust on our most cherished plans of 
reform as we remember how the hopes of the best 
and wisest have been often baffled ; and bearing in 
mind how this great mystery of Time, that rolls on 
without haste, without rest, is but a moment em- 
bosomed in eternity, we murmur "Who is worthy 
to open the Book and to loose the seals thereof t " 

History, Philosophy, Poetry, Art, these are then 
the sources of that supreme culture in which the 
ideal of academic method is reached. How urgent 
the need of such culture in this age and this land I 
need not add. We hear much about an education 
suited to the times. But an education truly suited 
to the times is not such an education as the times 
ask for, an education that flatters our overweening 
conceit of material progress, that drives us with 
7 



98 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

new force along the path on which we are already 
rushing with railroad speed ; we want a corrective 
for this distemper ; a power that shall struggle with 
these debilitating influences, and strengthen our civ- 
ilization at precisely those points where it is most 
weak. Culture should lead, not follow. That in- 
definite tribunal which goes under the convenient 
designation of "public sentiment" has no right to 
meddle with these high matters. " The end of edu- 
cation," says Richter, '' is to elevate above the spirit 
of the age." 

In our politics, which are allowed to usurp such a 
disproportioned share of our time and thought, how 
much we need this corrective of high culture to in- 
struct us in the worthlessness of most of the results 
at which politicians aim, to lessen our exaggerated 
estimate of the power of legislation ; to cure us of 
the folly of confounding the right to vote with the 
grand end of life ; in our religion how much we 
need it to enlarge our scope of doctrine ; to save us 
from our distressing faith in mechanical appliances ; 
to lift us above our little sects and systems ; to make 
us realize that the Son of Man came that we might 
have life, and that we might have it more abun- 
dantly ; in all our doing and seeking, in our business 
and pleasure, how much we need this wise, sweet, 
balanced temper which takes things at their true 
value, which refuses to confound means with ends ; 
which recognizes all good ; which strives after all 
perfection ! In our strenuous, uncompromising 
moods how gladly should we welcome this gracious 
but invincible ally ! 

I know it has been questioned whether in such a 
social state as ours this highest culture will be 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE, 99 

cared for. The unmistakable leaning of an in- 
dustrial democracy is towards the sciences. Not 
only do the sciences admit of more immediate ap- 
plication to those arts which a material civilization 
rates so high ; but their method and scope suit the 
exaggerated estimate of mere mental power by which 
such a civilization is characterized. No doubt Knowl- 
edge is power ; but it should be something more. 
It is much to our credit as a people that we have 
built so many miles of railroad and of telegraph ; 
that we have spanned so many rivers and crossed 
so many mountain chains ; but if this is all we have 
to show, we shall make, after all, but a poor figure 
among the nations. It was a great thing to lift 
Chicago out of the mud ; and so it was a great thing 
to pile up the pyramids, but these are not the things 
for which men, as they beheld them, have blessed 
God. 

The disposition to lay such undue stress on things 
which belong to the mere shell of life and do not 
touch its vital essence, is the perilous side of the 
great social and political experiment which we are 
making. And the most discouraging part of it is 
that the influences which should correct, in many 
cases only intensify the evil. It grieves a right- 
minded man to see reported in the papers the say- 
ing of a preacher of the Gospel that the Pacific rail- 
road would give us more enlarged conceptions of 
the divine attributes. But men have walked hum- 
bly with God who went on foot ; the poor in spirit, 
the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace- 
makers, were on the earth before the days of Watt 
and Stephenson. How much are we benefited by 
crossing the continent in six days, if our object is 



100 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

greedy and selfish ; why lay new wires beneath the 
Atlantic waves if, after all, 

— " the light-outspeeding telegraph 
Bears nothing on its beams ? " 

Does it seem that Religion is the corrective for 
all this ? But the working of the religious senti- 
ment is always shaped by the circumstances under 
which it manifests itself. In its specific forms it 
too often loses sight of its final aim. This aim is 
the constant clothing of man in the stature of an 
ampler spiritual completeness ; but, alas, man's own 
apprehension of this aim is blurred and indistinct, 
so that religion, instead of being the spur to all per- 
fection, becomes the excuse for narrowness, for rest- 
ing satisfied with a stunted and enfeebled growth. 
And just in proportion as the religious sentiment is 
sincere and powerful does it often become a barrier 
to progress. A man of limited intellectual range, 
who is at the same time a man of sincere religious 
conviction, is apt to be the most impracticable and 
unreasonable of men. Nowhere is the illumination 
of sound culture so much needed as in that sphere 
where the confounding of light and darkness entails 
such disastrous consequences. 

In no country in the world is the religious senti- 
ment so genuine, so energetic, as with us, and no- 
where does there exist such multiplicity of sects, 
such endless disposition to lay exclusive stress on 
single truths, such unhealthy fostering of selfish in- 
stincts of spiritual life. It is pitiful to think of the 
ideal of Christianity enforced in much of our relig- 
ious literature, and by so many of our religious 
teachers. I would not, in the least, underrate the 
real good that religion achieves even in its most 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 10 1 

imperfect forms. It is the infirmity of our nature, 
that we see in part, but surely it should be our con- 
stant aim to seek after better things. We have a 
superabundant religious energy. We rush about do- 
ing good with only less of zeal than we rush about 
in pursuit of money ; we carry the Gospel into all 
the earth. But, after all, the kingdom cometh with- 
out observation. There are things more to be de- 
sired than making proselytes or multiplying churches. 

If we are ever to have this high culture in the 
United States, is it not clear that our colleges must 
be its nurseries } Is not this the proper aim of that 
distinctive academic method, which I have been all 
along asserting } Is it not the supreme function of 
our colleges to supply this gracious and ennobling 
ministry.? "The American College," as President 
Eliot has truly said, " is an institution without a 
parallel." Its aim must not be confounded with the 
aim of the common school, which seeks to effect the 
greatest good for the greatest number, nor with 
the aim of the scientific or professional school, which 
aims at special results in a particular direction. 
The training of a college, to be effective, must be, 
to a considerable degree, exclusive ; it eliminates 
the best material, and aims at the highest mark ; 
achieving its end, not in any special preparation for 
special avocations, but in the enlargement of the 
whole nature, in the expansion of the spiritual senses 
to just and adequate apprehension of all the ends of 
living. 

We gain nothing by baptizing our colleges with 
high-sounding names, and hopelessly confounding 
the object of academic with the object of univer- 
sity instruction. We need great universities, in- 



102 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

stitutions where the highest instruction shall be 
communicated in all departments, where libraries, 
cabinets, and all scientific apparatus, shall be pro- 
vided ; but we shall get them soonest, not by wiping 
out our old college course, but by making it more 
distinctive and exacting. It cannot be recognized 
too clearly, that the functions of the college and uni- 
versity are distinct. The university cannot be too 
varied in its courses ; cannot be too well furnished 
with collections of every kind ; is better for standing 
in a great centre, and being thronged with crowds 
of eager students ; but the best results of college 
discipline are secured by severe training in few 
studies ; great libraries and museums are not essen- 
tial, and an increase of students beyond a certain 
limit is an evil. The aim should be, not so much 
to have many, as to have them carefully matched. 
The question has been asked, whether in the fun- 
damental idea of the college, we are not at fault. 
Before we decide this question, let us remember 
that in this country the fundamental idea of the 
college has never yet been realized. Our oldest in- 
stitutions were founded just at the crisis when, at 
Oxford and Cambridge, the colleges were supplant- 
ing the old mediaeval universities, and hence they 
received the name of colleges. And no doubt when 
the President and Fellows of Harvard College were 
incorporated the purpose was to introduce the Eng- 
lish college system. But whatever the original pur- 
pose may have been, it was never carried out. Long 
rows of brick buildings, with less of architectural 
beauty than any well-built cotton mill may boast, do 
not make a college. Neither do dry, formal recita- 
tions to a tutor. All this may be found in any pub- 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. IO3 

lie school. The fundamental idea of a college is 
that of an academic family. This is the substance 
of which our American college system retains the 
shell alone. This it is that constitutes the distinct- 
ive excellence of the English colleges ; this, that 
with all their faults, makes Oxford and Cambridge 
the seats of such serene culture, the haunts of so 
many beautiful and gracious memories. Who that 
has read the delightful memoir of Keble, by his life- 
long friend and biographer, Sir John Coleridge, will 
need to be reminded of that apt illustration of what 
I mean, in the charming picture which he gives of 
college life at Corpus sixty years ago, when Thomas 
Arnold had just been elected scholar, a "college," 
says Coleridge, "■ very small in its numbers, and 
humble in its buildings, but to which we and our 
fellow students formed an attachment never weak- 
ened in the after course of our lives." It is the 
fashion of the hour to speak with contempt of the 
English collegiate system, to decry the methods as 
antiquated, and the studies as useless. But a system 
which kindled the enthusiasm and retained the af- 
fection of two such opposite natures as Arnold and 
Keble, which armed one with heroic panoply for the 
thickest of life's battle, and sent the other to a re- 
mote country parish, to lead a life whose singular 
purity and grace has breathed itself in heavenly mu- 
sic across oceans and over continents, must have had 
in it some feature which we can ill afford to spare. 

This subtle charm of Oxford, the source of this 
deathless fascination, was what Keble, borrowing 
a word from his favorite Aristotle, used to call its 
?^os, that is the toning or general color that it dif- 
fused over the whole character, imparting a peculiar 



104 ^^^^ METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

gentleness and grace to the habitual exercise of the 
vigorous moral virtues. And who can fail to see 
that this peculiar tone, this ineffable and character- 
istic grace that steeps Oxford in sentiment, and 
bathes her with enchantment, is the result in very- 
great measure of that development of the idea of 
academic fellowship, which marks the English uni- 
versities from their great continental rivals. In 
other words, it is the distinctive college spirit ; the 
intimate fellowship of scholars gathered under one 
roof, and sitting around one board ; the close con- 
tact of cultivated minds ; the familiar exchange, not 
only between men of the same rank, but between 
pupil and instructor, meeting in private chambers 
and in classes of half-a-dozen, so painfuHy contrast- 
ing in all its aspects with the unloveliness of our 
college life, and the frigid, formal intercourse of 
student and professor. 

We need, then, to import into our academic life a 
different spirit. For, of course, such culture as I 
have been upholding cannot be imparted by mechan- 
ical and formal methods. The impulse must be liv- 
ing, personal ; it must come not from books, but 
men. The mere schoolmaster is never more out of 
place than in the professor's chair. I share to the 
full Lessing's contempt for what he called profess- 
oring. Unless mind touches mind there will be no 
heat. We make much of our improved methods 
and text books, but after all they matter less than 
we suppose. A genial, opulent, overflowing soul is 
the secret of success in teaching. To have read 
Euripides with Milton, were better than having the 
latest critical edition. Not the methods but the 
men gave Rugby and Soreze their fame. And 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 105 

hence the advantage, in a college, of smaller num- 
bers, where the students, brought into daily familiar 
contact with superior minds, may catch uncon- 
sciously the earnestness, the urbanity, the kindred 
glow which only such personal contact can commu- 
nicate. 

All inspirations are vital. The spirit of a living 
creature is in the wheels. It was in strict conformity 
with this supreme spiritual law that when the high- 
est, holiest truth was manifested, it was manifested 
in a Living Person. And here, that nothing in this 
discussion be misunderstood, let me distinctly say, 
what I have all along implied, that the highest, 
most perfect culture is only possible through Him 
in whom alone we are made complete. For I have 
aimed to show that culture is not simply intellec- 
tual, but covers the whole nature. It is such quick- 
ening of the vital springs of being as can come only 
from a person. It is love of the Supreme Perfec- 
tion, such love as can only be created by an in- 
ward loving apprehension of Him in whom it was 
revealed. The goal of human perfection can be 
reached in no other way. Without this personal 
fellowship with the Incarnate Life and Truth, we 
are cut off from the Sovereign Quickener. We hew 
out for ourselves broken cisterns instead of drink- 
ing of that river of God which is full of water. We 
garnish a sepulchre which within is full of rotten- 
ness and death. 

And as the supreme, all constraining power of 
the Great Teacher was rooted in his transcendent 
personality, in itself a judgment of all evil, an allure- 
ment to all good, so in a lower sense is it not less 
true of all teachers. We have been discussing 



I06 THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. 

methods ; but let us not forget that method, after 
all, is secondary. "To write well," says Milton, "a 
man must be himself a poem ; " so to teach well 
his inmost soul must be imbued with the sweetness, 
the generosity, the simplicity of that divine philoso- 
phy which it is his highest duty to inculcate. The 
springs which he causes to gush forth can never 
rise higher than their fount. We cannot be too 
earnestly persuaded that all fruitful academic re- 
form must find its beginning here. And if our col- 
leges are destined ever to become the seats of this 
serene culture, the chosen haunts of those gracious, 
ennobling influences, it will be chiefly for the reason 
that those to whom the sacred office of instruction 
is intrusted, warming to their work, and gathering 
their pupils about them in an emulation and rivalry 
of love, shall wield that spontaneous, rhythmic influ- 
ence which flows " from soul to soul, and lives for- 
ever and forever." 

I have been asserting a distinctive academic cul- 
ture. It has been my aim to show that the prog- 
ress of knowledge, the immense increase in the ex- 
tent and variety of the sciences, instead of rendering 
the need of this distinctive culture less, has only 
made it greater. Let us banish the false notion of 
any antagonism between this culture, and education 
that has a different scope and aim. It is not neces- 
sary to depreciate the value of specific technical 
training in order to exalt the worth of this more 
complete development. Such an institution as the 
Technological School in Boston is doing a good 
work. It supplies a need which our colleges could 
supply only through the sacrifice of a greater good. 
I approve its method, and rejoice in its success. In 



THE METHOD OF ACADEMIC CULTURE. lO/ 

our common schools we are doing a better work. 
We cannot forget that the great mass of the com- 
munity, from the necessity of the case, can receive 
no other training than they receive here. I advo- 
cate a distinctive academic culture, not in place of 
these, not in opposition to them, but in alliance with 
them, to preside over and direct them. I advocate 
it, because scientific training, unless regulated and 
qualified by a broader culture, can only end in de- 
bilitating, instead of enlarging, the spiritual nature ; 
because popular instruction, unless constantly in- 
vigorated and enlightened by higher intellectual 
forces, can move only in a dull mechanical routine. 
For education must receive its shape from above, 
not from beneath. Unless we do something to raise 
as well as to diffuse, there is danger that the sneer 
of Renan will prove well founded and the New 
World atone for its neglect of superior instruction, 
by a long course of vulgarity of thought and bru- 
tality of manners. 

I have not then, in the view which I have ad- 
vanced, been pleading for a puny, dilettanti culture ; 
a culture remote from life and its serious concerns. 
On the contrary, the culture I have been asserting 
keeps the soul in constant, inspiring contact with 
the deepest springs of action. It is not selfish and 
individual, but permeates the whole social organism. 
Itself accessible only to its elect, its benediction 
descends on all. Its influence is wide as the influ- 
ence of spiritual truth. For man liveth not by bread 
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God. 



ADDRESS 



UNVEILING OF THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WIL- 
LIAMS IN THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE, 
OCTOBER i6, 1877. 



We bring to a close, in these services, a long pur- 
posed work. A full year before yonder shores were 
lighted by the flames of the burning Gaspee, when 
this State was still a dependency of the British 
crown, and the rule of George the Third was as un- 
disputed by the Pawtuxet as the Thames, the free- 
men of Providence, assembled in public meeting, 
resolved to erect a monument to the " founder of 
the town and colony." The population at that date 
scarcely exceeded four thousand souls, and it is un- 
likely that anything more was contemplated than a 
simple memorial to mark the western slope where, 
for well nigh a century, the rays of the setting sun 
had gently touched his grave. The swift march of 
events, the quarrel with the mother-country, the 
pressure of the revolutionary struggle, hindered a 
project, which still never wholly passed from mind, 
till after the lapse of another century the munificent 
bequest of one of his lineal descendants made any 
longer delay unworthy of a prosperous and public- 
spirited community. Yet we need not deplore a 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. IO9 

postponement which has caused the original plan to 
be carried out on a scale so far beyond what was 
first intended. Let us rather congratulate ourselves 
that the final execution has been reserved for a time 
when the real merit of Roger Williams is much bet- 
ter appreciated, and for a generation whose ampler 
means allow a more adequate tribute, and for an 
artist, who charged with the difficult task of em- 
bodying in ideal form one of whom no authentic 
likeness has been preserved, has divined with such 
admirable insight those characteristics of the man 
which establish his chief claim to our veneration. 
And if to any who now hear me it may seem that 
some more central or conspicuous site befits so elab- 
orate a work, let it be borne in mind that this statue 
of Roger Williams stands in the midst of fields 
which he received as a free gift from the great 
sachems Canonicus and Miantunnomi in grateful 
recognition of the many kind services he had con- 
tinually done them, which for more than two cen- 
turies remained in the uninterrupted possession of 
his posterity, and which have only passed from their 
hands to be forever preserved for the public use. 
What more fitting site could have been selected 
than a spot which thus recalls the estimate in which 
he was held by the original possessors of the soil .? 

These ceremonies would be incomplete without a 
brief summary of the career and services of him to 
whom we pay this unusual tribute. In thus setting 
up, with solemn religious rite, a memorial whose 
enduring bronze and granite shall attest to coming 
generations our estimate of Roger Williams, we owe 
to ourselves, we owe to those who shall gaze upon 
it with respectful interest after we are gone, a de- 



no ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

liberate statement of the grounds on which that es- 
timate is based. And on the present occasion such 
a survey is something more than a becoming close 
to these public exercises. For as we consider the 
thoughtful features that have just been unveiled, 
we cannot forget that they are the lineaments of 
one respecting whom the judgments of men have 
been much divided, of one whose career has given 
rise to more difference of opinion than has existed 
respecting any prominent actor in our early New 
England history. There is, therefore, the more need 
to-day that we place on record, even at the risk of 
reciting a familiar story, the considerations that have 
moved us to this step. A work which three gen- 
erations have waited to see finished ought surely to 
be the fruit of intelligent conviction. Let us then 
seek to set before us precisely what manner of man 
Roger Williams was, and precisely what work it was 
that he accomplished. After he has lain in the 
grave for well-nigh two hundred years the time has 
surely come for an unprejudiced estimate of the 
real service which he rendered as well to this com- 
munity, as to the world. A proper local pride may 
make us jealous of the good name of one whose 
career gives the distinctive significance to our early 
history, yet if he has really done anything worthy 
to be remembered, he does not stand in need of 
mere eulogium from us. The best service we can 
pay his memory is to place him in his true light ; 
to assign him his rightful rank among the venerated 
names of the past ; to make him if possible stand 
forth on the page of history in all the essential out- 
lines of his character as clear and distinct as, by 
the hand of genius, his visible form is made to stand 
before us now. 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. Ill 

And should the natural inquiry here arise, why 
has the merit of Roger Williams been so much more 
debated than that of his contemporaries, some of the 
foremost of whom have left on record such a gener- 
ous estimate of his character and motives, the simple 
answer is, that those who have judged him most fa- 
vorably, and those who have passed the most adverse 
sentence on him, have equally agreed in assigning 
the most conspicuous place to what was only a pass- 
ing episode in his career. It was his fate, as soon 
almost as he landed on these shores, to be placed in 
antagonism with a singularly compact and homo- 
geneous community, a community whose early emi- 
nence in letters afforded it a marked advantage in 
impressing upon posterity its own view of any trans- 
action in which it bore a part. It almost of neces- 
sity followed, that when the earliest attempts were 
made to vindicate his memory, the line of attack 
became the line of defense, and thus a wholly dis- 
proportioned space was assigned to his controversy 
with the Massachusetts colony. Unfortunately those 
who for a long time felt most interest in this con- 
troversy failed to estimate correctly its true aspects. 
On the one hand it was hastily assumed that the 
course pursued by the Puritans could be success- 
fully defended only by representing Roger Williams 
in the most odious light, while on the other hand 
it was supposed with as little reason that his repu- 
tation could be vindicated best by denouncing in 
most unmeasured terms the inconsistency which 
fled from persecution in the old world only in turn 
to persecute for mere opinions' sake in the new. 
Hence Roger Williams came to be held up either as 
a headstrong enthusiast, a disturber of the public 



112 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

peace, or as a martyr for conscience sake, who suffered 
exile solely for his unflinching advocacy of the great 
principle of religious liberty. But this episode had 
no such supreme significance as has been assigned 
to it. Had his career closed with this we should 
not be here to-day, for it is not on any attitude 
which he assumed at this time, that his claim to be 
remembered rests. It is only in the light thrown 
back upon it by subsequent events that the contro- 
versy demands even a passing notice on this occa- 
sion. When in the month of February, 163 1, Roger 
Williams landed at Boston, from the ship Lyon, he 
was still a young man. While very little is known 
respecting him, his whole later history leaves no 
doubt that when young he was ardent, impulsive, 
fearless, fond of disputation, perfectly frank in the 
expression of his opinions. From the language with 
which Winthrop notes his arrival as a *' godly min- 
ister," he would seem to have received orders in the 
English church ; but he had renounced gains and 
preferments rather than act with a doubting con- 
science in conforming to a national establishment. 
Though he came on the flood-tide of the great Pu- 
ritan migration, he did not come as a part of it. It 
does not appear that he was specially concerned in 
the memorable enterprise which had just been un- 
dertaken by Winthrop and his associates ; for he 
never became a freeman of the colony where he 
made his residence. In the series of shrewd, well- 
considered steps by which a private trading corpo- 
ration was silently converted into a body politic, he 
seems to have felt no interest ; nor was the ultimate 
success of the experiment a matter which he ever 
had at heart. It may be doubted whether his mind 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. II3 

even took in its full dimensions. A man of specu- 
lation rather than action, an enthusiast in the pur- 
suit of ideal truth, he came a pilgrim to these shores 
in search not of a thrifty and well organized plan- 
tation " with a religious idea behind it," but of a 
promised land where truth and peace might have 
their "endless date of pure and sweetest joys." In 
his own touching words, he had " tasted the bitter- 
ness of death," that he might " keep his soul unde- 
filed." It was a foregone conclusion that such a 
man should come in conflict with the community 
which received him at first with cordial welcome ; 
a community without a parallel in the history of 
colonial enterprise, welded together by a common 
faith, inflexibly resolved on the accomplishment of 
definite ends, earnest to establish a reign of right- 
eousness, but intolerant of difference of opinion, re- 
garding liberty of conscience with equal fear and 
hate, and above all, a community where civil and 
religious institutions were so singularly blended that 
the advancement of pure religion was viewed as one 
of the primary functions of the civil magistrate. 
Against this community, so jealous of their rights, 
so resolved on the exclusive enjoyment of them, 
"knit together as one man, always having before 
their eyes their commission as members of the same 
body," the headstrong enthusiast dashed himself. 
He had hardly landed when we find him denoun- 
cing the Boston congregation for not separating 
wholly from the Church of England. He next 
raised a question respecting the power of the civil 
magistrate which cut at the roots of the theocratic 
system already so firmly planted ; he opposed the 
freeman's oath ; and he did all this not in a period 
8 



114 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

of profound calm when the freest discussion of fun- 
damental principles might be safely tolerated, but 
at an anxious crisis when the very existence of the 
company was at stake ; when it was known that in 
the Privy Council grave charges were insinuated that 
the colonists had virtually cast off their allegiance, 
and were planning to be wholly separated from the 
church and laws of England ; when an order in 
council had actually been obtained for the produc- 
tion of the charter ; when the influx of new-comers 
threatened to weaken essentially, if not destroy, that 
unity of belief and action which the founders of the 
colony had regarded as a fundamental condition of 
their enterprise. 

Under these circumstances, the course pursued 
towards Roger Williams was not exceptional. What 
was done to him had been done in repeated instances 
before. Within the first year of its settlement the 
colony had passed sentence of exclusion from its 
territory upon no less than fourteen persons. It 
was the ordinary method by which a corporate body 
would deal with those whose presence no longer 
seemed desirable. Conceiving themselves to be by 
patent the exclusive possessors of the soil, ^:^soil 
which they had purchased for the accomplishment 
of their personal and private ends, — the colonists 
never doubted their competency to fix the terms on 
which others should be allowed to share in their 
undertaking. So far from being exceptionally harsh, 
their treatment of Roger Williams was marked by 
unusual lenity. His " sorrowful winter flight," when 
for fourteen weeks he was so severely tossed, " not 
knowing what bread or bed did mean," was no part 
of the official sentence pronounced against him, but 
hardship which he voluntarily assumed. 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. II5 

While there is some discrepancy in the contem- 
porary accomits of this transaction, there is entire 
agreement on one point, that the assertion by Roger 
Williams of the doctrine of " soul-liberty " was not 
the head and front of his offending. Whatever was 
meant by the vague charge in the final sentence 
that he had '' broached and divulged new and dan- 
gerous opinions, against the authority of magis- 
trates," it did not mean that he had made emphatic 
the broad doctrine of the entire separation of church 
and state. We have his own testimony on this 
point. In several allusions to the subject in his 
later writings, — and it can hardly be supposed that 
in a matter which he felt so sorely his memory 
would have betrayed him, — he never assigns to his 
opinion respecting the power of the civil magistrate 
more than a secondary place. He repeatedly affirms 
that the chief causes of his banishment were his 
extreme views regarding separation, and his de- 
nouncing of the patent. Had he been himself con- 
scious of having incurred the hostility of the Mas- 
sachusetts colony for asserting the great principle 
with which he was afterwards identified, he would 
surely have laid stress , upon it. It is true that al- 
most from the day he landed, some form of this 
principle seemed floating before his mind. One of 
the very earliest charges brought against him was, 
having broached the novel opinion that the magis- 
trate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, 
nor any other offense against the first table ; and in 
the final proceedings this same offense was made 
the ground of the foremost accusation brought 
against him. It is clear that the conviction had a 
strong hold upon his own mind, and it is not un- 



Il6 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

likely that " in the spacious circuits of his musing '* 
he already saw the fundamental place it held ; but 
it is equally clear that in the long controversy it 
had become covered up by other issues, and that 
his opponents, at least, did not regard it as his most 
dangerous heresy. So far as it was a mere specula- 
tive opinion it was not new. It had been explicitly 
affirmed in the Confession of the English Baptists 
at Amsterdam, put forth in the year 1611, and, ac- 
cording to Cotton, there were many known to hold 
this opinion in Massachusetts, who were tolerated 
" not only to live in the commonwealth, but also in 
the fellowship of the churches." 

I repeat that the reputation of Roger Williams 
has suffered because such undue importance has 
been assigned to the transaction which I have just 
narrated. When carefully examined it will be seen 
that no such significance belongs to it. To upbraid 
the Puritans as unrelenting persecutors, or extol 
Roger Williams as a martyr to the cause of relig- 
ious liberty, is equally wide of the real fact. On 
the one hand, the controversy had its origin in the 
passionate and precipitate zeal of a young man 
whose relish for disputation made him never unwill- 
ing to encounter opposition, and on the other, in 
the exigencies of a unique community, where the 
instincts of a private corporation had not yet ex- 
panded into the more liberal policy of a body politic. 
If we cannot impute to the colony any large states- 
manship, so neither can we wholly acquit Roger 
Williams of the charge of mixing great principles 
with some whimsical conceits. The years which he 
passed in Massachusetts were years of discipline 
and growth, when he doubtless already cherished in 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. \\J 

his active brain the germs of the principles which 
he afterwards developed; but the fruit was destined 
to be ripened under another sky. Though he him- 
self, at a later period, complained bitterly of the 
treatment which he had received, yet it cannot be 
doubted that for him exile from Massachusetts was 
an incalculable boon. As rightly put by his great 
antagonist, John Cotton, though in a far deeper and 
truer sense than was intended, ** it was not banish- 
ment, but enlargement," — it determined him to an- 
other, a wider, a far more beneficent career. Had 
he remained in Massachusetts, he would only be 
remembered as a godly but contentious Puritan 
divine. Removed for a time from the heated at- 
mosphere of controversy, he first saw in its true 
proportions the great principle which has shed en- 
during lustre on his name. His personal character- 
istics also present themselves in a far more engaging 
light when winning the confidence of the shy Narra- 
gansett sachems, than in wrangling with his breth- 
ren of the bay. It would almost seem as if Win- 
throp himself had some presentiment of this larger 
future that lay before the exile, when, with the kind- 
ness that never failed, he urged Williams to steer 
his course to these shores, ** for many high, heavenly 
and public ends." I pass gladly to consider him as 
he emerges on this new stage, where his admirable 
qualities, his benevolence, his intellectual breadth, 
his rare spiritual insight were revealed in their clear- 
est light. The solemn bar before which the actors 
in the world's history are made to pass for judgment 
is not a petty police-court, turning its microscopic 
eye simply on their shortcomings, but a tribunal 
which weighs the good against the evil that men 



Il8 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

have done, and which fulfills its high and sacred 
functions not less in applauding the one than in 
condemning the other. Few, indeed, would remain 
to claim our reverence if we were only curious about 
their faults. 

It was in the spring of 1636 that Roger Williams, 
accepting the hint privately conveyed from Win- 
throp as a "voice from God," began to build and 
plant on the eastern bank of the Seekonk, a little 
distance above the present Central Bridge. But 
upon receiving from the authorities of Plymouth a 
friendly intimation that he had settled within their 
bounds, he cheerfully, though with great inconven- 
ience to himself, set out in quest of another habita- 
tion. Early in the month of June, when external 
nature in this region is decked in her loveliest at- 
tire, he launched on this brief but memorable voy- 
age. Five companions were with him in his canoe. 
The pleasing tradition has always been preserved 
that, as he approached the opposite bank, a group 
of Indians greeted him with a friendly salutation, 
and that he stepped to return their welcome on the 
rock which for years has been one of our cherished 
historic spots ; but which I fear, in the march of 
modern improvement, is destined to become to our 
children a mythical locality. Once more embark- 
ing, and rounding the two promontories which, with 
their crowded wharves and network of iron rails, 
have so little to remind us of the winding shore and 
fair undulations of peaceful woodland that greeted 
his gaze, he turned to the north, and paddling till 
he reached the mouth of a small stream which 
poured its limpid current into a wide cove, there 
made his final landing. A spring of delicious water 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. II9 

gushing from the foot of the steep hill probably 
determined the precise locality. In grateful recog- 
nition of the guiding hand which he never doubted 
had led him in all his way, he named the place 
Providence. 

The name has become famihar on our lips and 
few, as they now pronounce it, ever pause to con- 
sider how much it means. It is a word that car- 
ries with it a commentary on the career of him 
who chose it. The early settlers of Massachusetts 
brought with them tender memories of the homes 
they had left behind. In the names which they se- 
lected for their new settlements they gave evidence 
of the touching solicitude with which these memories 
were cherished. But when the founder of Provi- 
dence pillowed his weary head for the first time by 
the mouth of the Mooshausic, his thoughts turned 
not to an earthly home, but to a home above. 
Thrice an exile and a pilgrim, he now saw in his 
dreams only the open skies and the protecting 
angels of an invisible power. Years after, in writ- 
ing of this incident, he says : 'T turned my course 
from Salem unto these parts, wherein I may say 
Peniel, that is, I have seen the face of God." The 
dreamy, mystical, unworldly temper of Roger Wil- 
liams is nowhere made more evident than in this 
unique designation which he selected for his infant 
settlement. 

In thus settling ujpon the shores of the Narra- 
gansett nothing was farther from the thoughts of 
Williams than to become the founder of a new col- 
ony. Still less was it his aim, like Blackstone, who 
was here before him, merely to escape the tyranny 
of the ''lords brethren," and secure for himself, in 



120 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

solitude, the largest individual liberty. His end was 
nobler and more unselfish than that. The great 
purpose that led him here was simply to preach the 
gospel to the Indians ; to quote his own words, 
" my sole desire was to do the natives good." The 
impulse surely was as lofty as that which had led 
the Puritans, sixteen years before, to seek in Massa- 
chusetts, '' a place of cohabitation and consortship," 
where only those who adopted their precise creed 
should be welcomed to their narrow domain. Al- 
ready with this end in view he had made, long be- 
fore his banishment, a diligent stud}^ of the native 
languages. ''God was pleased," he writes, "to 
give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them 
in their filthy, smoky holes, even while I lived at 
Plymouth and Salem, to gain their tongue." His 
exile seemed to open the door to this endeavor. 
Yet the same benevolence which had led him to 
make his own misfortunes a means of good to the 
Indians, constrained him not to refuse an asylum to 
such as had suffered like himself. Not to promote 
any private interest, but " out of pity," he permitted 
others to come with him. A few had joined him 
while still at Seekonk ; more followed him after he 
had fixed himself at Providence. The territory be- 
longed to him alone. In obtaining it he acted on 
the principle which he had so earnestly avowed, that 
the Indians were the rightful proprietors of the 
lands they occupied, and that no English patent 
could convey a complete title to it. But though he 
was obliged to mortgage his house in Salem to se- 
cure the means of making presents to the Narra- 
gansett sachems, it was not by money that the land 
was purchased. "It was not," he affirms, "thou- 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 121 

sands, nor tens of thousands of money that could 
have bought an English entrance into this bay, but 
I was the procurer of the purchase by that language, 
acquaintance and favor with the natives, and other 
advantages, which it pleased God to give me." The 
land was conveyed to him by formal deed from Ca- 
nonicus and Miantunnomi, and ''was his as much as 
any man's coat upon his back." Thus circumstances 
which he had not at first foreseen, caused a modi- 
fication of his plan. Desiring to make his purchase a 
" shelter for persons distressed for conscience," and 
considering the condition of divers of his country- 
men, he " communicated his said purchase unto his 
loving friends." In accordance with this modified 
purpose, he executed a deed giving an equal share 
with himself to twelve of his companions, '' and 
such others as the major part shall admit into the 
same fellowship of vote." Such was the simple be- 
ginning of the little settlement long known as the 
Providence plantations. Had Roger Williams loved 
power, he might have secured for himself some kind 
of preeminence. The philanthropic Penn did not 
disdain such a course. But the founder of Provi- 
dence chose to admit his associates on terms of per- 
fect equality. In providing a shelter for the poor 
and the persecuted, " according to their several 
persuasions," he established a commonwealth in 
"the unmixed form of a pure democracy." 

Still, remarkable as were the circumstances under 
which the infant community struggled into life, 
these do not furnish its distinctive claim to our at- 
tention. It was not for the broad foundation on 
which it rested all civil power, but for the novel 
limitation which it imposed on the exercise of that 



122 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

power, that it holds a place in history so dispropor- 
tioned to its importance in every other respect. 
Opened as an asylum for the distressed in con- 
science, it seems from the outset to have been tac- 
itly assumed that conscience should never be re- 
strained. Hence Williams, in seeking the advice of 
Winthrop as to the mode by which the new settle- 
ment could best become *' compact in a civil way 
and power," makes no allusion to the principle which 
he had asserted so recently in Massachusetts. But 
it would be absurd to argue from this omission that 
the principle had lost any of its importance in his 
mind. When the actual covenant was drawn up, 
which became the basis of public order, in extract- 
ing from the inhabitants a pledge of active and pas- 
sive obedience to all orders, made by the major con- 
sent, for the public good, the provision was ex- 
pressly added that this should be "only in civil 
things." 

Thus, for the first time in history, a form of gov- 
ernment was adopted which drew a clear and un- 
mistakable line between the temporal and the spir- 
itual power, and a community came into being which 
was an anomaly among the nations. The compact 
signed by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the May- 
flower has been praised as the earliest attempt to 
institute a government on the basis of the general 
good; surely the covenant subscribed by the set- 
tlers of Providence deserves a place beside it as a 
first embodiment in an actual experiment of the 
great principle of unrestricted religious liberty. In 
either case the settlements were sxnall and the im- 
mediate results were unimportant ; but the princi- 
ples were world-wide in their application. The Prov- 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 1 23 

idence document was, in fact, the more significant, 
since the political maxim that lay imbedded in the 
Mayflower compact was implied rather than con- 
sciously affirmed, while the principle to which Roger 
Williams and his associates set their hands was in- 
tentionally and deliberately adopted as the corner- 
stone of the new structure they were building. 

The community which grew into shape at Provi- 
dence embodied in a " lively experiment " the prin- 
ciple which Roger Williams had so strenuously 
maintained. Let us now examine his position, and 
ascertain precisely in what sense this experiment 
was novel. Had we no other information than the 
vague charges brought against him in Massachu- 
setts, or the significant clause attached to the Prov- 
idence covenant, his exact theory would have re- 
mained a matter of conjecture. How clearly it was 
held, how carefully it was limited, there would have 
been no way of accurately ascertaining. But fortu- 
nately he has left his views on record, and we may 
know precisely what meed of praise is due him. He 
has himself supplied us with abundant means of 
making ourselves familiar with the arguments with 
which he "maintained the rocky strength" of his 
impregnable position. When in England, engaged 
in procuring from the Long Parliament the earliest 
patent for Rhode Island, he found time, amid en- 
grossing duties, to publish his famous volume, '^ The 
Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Con- 
science," and it is in this volume, printed in the 
year 1644, that we find the first full expression of 
his opinions. They are views which he had long 
been meditating, which it cannot be doubted he was 
revolving in some form when he first arrived in 



124 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

Massachusetts, but which, it can be as little doubted, 
meditation and experience had matured. The book 
throughout is of a piece with his whole previous ca- 
reer. It was rapidly written ; as he tells us himself, 
" in change of rooms and corners, yea, sometimes in 
variety of strange houses, sometimes in fields in the 
midst of travel." The style is not unfrequently 
confused, as though the earnest flow of the writer's 
thoughts left the pen lagging behind ; and the course 
of the argument is not always well held in hand. 
Still each page is stamped with most intense con- 
viction, and in some passages the language has a 
passionate warmth of imagery that almost becomes 
poetic. The personal characteristics of Luther are 
not more distinctly revealed in his writings than 
are those of Roger Williams. But what especially 
marks the " Bloudy Tenent " is the clear concep- 
tion of one great principle that runs through it, and 
the boldness with which every logical deduction 
from this principle is accepted. 

The doctrine laid down in the book is that of the 
radical and complete separation of the spiritual and 
temporal provinces. Roger Williams was profoundly 
sensible of the fundamental importance of religion 
to the welfare of society, and he affirms in the most 
emphatic manner the obligation of every human 
being to love God and to obey his laws. We could 
not do him a greater wrong, and could not more 
completely misapprehend his meaning than by con- 
founding his theory with the secular theory which 
has come to prevail in our time, which not only 
separates church and state, but insists on regarding 
religion as of secondary consequence. While he re- 
moves religion from the care of the civil magistrate 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 1 25 

he does not weaken in the sHghtest its binding ob- 
hgation. But this obhgation binds the soul of man 
only to his maker; no fellow-man has a right to 
come between. God has delegated to no one au- 
thority over the human soul. Under the old dispen- 
sation he prescribed the mode by which he chose 
to be worshipped, but under the new this was left 
free, and all human laws prescribing or forbidding 
rites or doctrines not inconsistent with civil peace, 
are an invasion of the divine prerogative. Belief 
cannot be forced ; to make the attempt is only to 
cause hypocrisy. To determine the standard of be- 
lief the civil authority must be itself infallible ; if 
permitted to regulate conscience, the magistrate will 
only make his own views the standard of truth. 
In these propositions we have the great doctrine of 
liberty of conscience first asserted in its plenitude. 

It is no less important to observe how, in the 
clear apprehension of Roger Williams, this principle 
was limited. To those who were firmly persuaded 
that religion could only flourish when protected by 
the state, above all to those who regarded church 
and state simply as two forms of the same thing, it 
is not surprising that his views seemed subversive 
alike of ecclesiastical and civil order. But because 
he so warmly opposed the order then established in 
Massachusetts it by no means followed that he was 
opposed to all order. Here again we most griev- 
ously mistake him if we suppose that he sought to 
weaken the restraints of law. His temper was hasty 
but not anarchical. When he affirmed his doctrine 
that the magistrate ought not to punish the breach 
of the first table, he was careful to add, '' other- 
wise than in such cases as did disturb the civil 



126 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

peace." In his treatise we find this important 
quahfication not overlooked. He affirms that civil 
society is necessary to the happiness of men, and 
that to ensure its protection a sufficient amount of 
power must be confided to its rulers. But the ob- 
ject of such a society is simply the promotion of 
civil interests. Still the civil and the spiritual in- 
terests of man are so inseparable that even the civil 
magistrate has duties with reference to religion. If 
the religion be one that his own conscience ap- 
proves as true, he is bound to honor it by personal 
submission to its claims, and by protecting those 
who practice it ; on the other hand, if the religion 
be false, he still owes it permission and protection. 
But should a man's rehgious opinions lead him to 
practices which become offensive to the peace and 
good order of society, the civil magistrate is bound 
at once to interfere. So long, however, as this line 
is not passed, not even pagans, Jews, or Turks 
should be molested by the civil power ; or, to quote 
his own words, "■ true civility and Christianity may 
both flourish in a state or kingdom, notwithstand- 
ing the permission of divers and contrary con- 
sciences, either of Jews or Gentiles." 

To understand how far Roger Williams was the 
advocate of a new principle we must carefully bear 
in mind that he was not arguing simply for religions 
toleration. It is strange how this point has been 
misconceived even by writers who have devoted 
careful study to the subject. It is true, that in his 
letter to the town of Providence, so often quoted as 
the most felicitous expression of his views, he seems 
to have in mind merely the right of persons of divers 
beliefs to be excused from attendance upon the es- 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 12/ 

tablished worship ; but evidently his illustration of a 
ship's company *' not forced to come to the ship's 
prayers " is only a partial expression of his theory. 
There can be no doubt whatever as to his true prin- 
ciple. The doctrine which he constantly maintains 
is, not that men of various beliefs should be toler- 
ated by the civil power, but the far broader and 
more fruitful principle that the civil power has noth- 
ing whatever to do with religious belief, save when 
it leads to some actual violation of social order. In 
a word, what he advocated was not religious tolera- 
tion, but the entire separation of the temporal and 
spiritual provinces. 

Mere religious toleration had long found advo- 
cates. In the wonderful book which breathes the 
earliest and purest spirit of the English reformation, 
the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, it is distinctly 
taught. It was pathetically urged by the great 
Chancellor de I'Hopital on the brink of the precipice 
down which religious fanaticism was precipitating 
France ; with what practical effect in either case, 
was shown by the fires of Smithfield and the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew. At the very time when 
Roger Williams was writing, it had, in various forms, 
found much support in England. With the meeting 
of the Long Parliament it came to the forefront of 
discussion. In opposition to the Presbyterian theory 
of an absolute conformity of the whole nation to one 
established church, a theory carried out in the adop- 
tion by Parliament of the Westminster Confession 
and Discipline, there were those who advocated a 
limited toleration around a national establishment, 
and those who advocated an establishment with 
an unlimited toleration of every religious opinion. 



1.28 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

Roger Williams belonged to neither of these par- 
ties. What he claimed was the entire separation of 
religion from the civil power. His position may be 
put in a still clearer light by contrasting what was 
done at Providence with what was done at nearly 
the same time in Maryland. By the original charter 
of Maryland, granted in 1632, Christianity as pro- 
fessed by the Church of England was protected, but 
beyond this, equality of religious rights was left un- 
touched. The mild forbearance of Calvert caused 
religious freedom to be established ; but in award- 
ing praise for this to a Catholic proprietary, it must 
be remembered that Maryland was not an inde- 
pendent Catholic state, but simply the colony of a 
Protestant kingdom. And, at best, it was toleration 
that was established. Religious freedom was a boon 
which the civil authority had granted, and which the 
same authority was competent to limit or take away. 
So when, in 1649, three years after the settlement 
of Providence, the legislature of Maryland placed on 
her statute book an act for securing religious free- 
dom, it was expressly extended only to those who 
professed the Christian religion ; while any who blas- 
phemed God, or denied the Trinity, were punished 
with death. Surely no one can confound this with 
the doctrine laid down by Roger Williams. 

That Roger Williams completely solved the diffi- 
cult problem of the relation of church and state I do 
not affirm. That problem is more complex than he 
supposed, and since his day it has assumed aspects 
which he did not consider. But he stated it more 
clearly than it had been stated by any earlier writer, 
and more than anticipated Jeremy Taylor. He 
cleared the path which even Massachusetts has been 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 1 29 

content to tread. The principle which he laid down 
is now the accepted and fundamental maxim of 
American politics. More than this, his distinctive 
merit lies in the fact that he not only defended it 
as an abstract principle, but himself carried it into 
successful operation. In the ranks of sovereign 
honor Lord Bacon assigns the first to the founders 
of states and commonwealths. In the strictest sense 
it cannot, perhaps, be claimed for Roger Williams 
that he was even the founder of a colony, for it was 
a procedure for which he possessed no legal author- 
ity, and w^hich formed no part of his original plan. 
But since the settlement at Providence was the crea- 
tion of his benevolence, and crystallized round his 
great idea, and at last owed its legal recognition to 
his disinterested labors, it may look back reverently 
to him as the author of its existence. The unusual 
circumstances under which it c-ame into being only 
intensifies the gratitude with which we hail the 
apostle of religious liberty as the founder of Rhode 
Island. 

But it is time to consider more closely the man 
himself. For this study the material is ample. No 
man who ever lived in New England has had every 
defect of temper so minutely explored and every in- 
consistency of conduct so unsparingly exposed. 
The day, I trust, is long past when one in the posi- 
tion in which I stand to-day, is expected to vindicate 
a historical character from every charge. Of that 
sort of commemorative discourse we have had, in 
New England, more than enough. We have ceased 
to think that in the days of the fathers only angels 
were walking the earth. Let us then grant, without 
hesitation, that Roger Williams was a man like 
9 



I30 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

Other men. Let us concede that his " many pre- 
cious parts " were coupled in the early part of his 
career with an *' unsettled judgment," that his ''well 
approved teaching " was mixed with what seemed 
to his hearers "strange opinions," that the ''judi- 
cious sort of Christians " found him "unquiet and un- 
lamblike," and that even his best friends deemed 
him guilty of " presumption " and condemned his 
conduct as "passionate and precipitate;" yet evi- 
dently all these are faults of a generous, a bold, an 
enthusiastic spirit. There was no quality about him 
that made him either hated or despised. On the 
contrary, there was in all his trials a calm courage, 
an abiding patience, a noble disinterestedness, an 
unfailing sweetness of temper, an unquestioned 
piety that won for him the warmest affection even 
of those who opposed him. We find Winthrop writ- 
ing to him in words that do equal honor to both : 
" Sir, we have often tried your patience, but could 
never conquer it." And the most accomplished of 
our living critics, Lowell, rises from the study of 
this period with the remark : " Let me premise that 
there are two men above all others, for whom our 
respect is heightened by their letters — the elder 
John Winthrop and Roger Williams." The very 
weaknesses and eccentricities of Roger Williams 
only make him a more striking character. He stands 
out from the somewhat monotonous background of 
Puritan decorum, as the mountains of his native 
Wales stand out from the uniform sweep of the Eng- 
lish coast. The recent biographer of Milton terms 
him " a picturesque figure forever in early Ameri- 
can history," and adds that no man of that age de- 
serves more attention. Must he not have had about 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. I3I 

him something more than usually winning, who, 
while still a youth, so gained the regard of that 
morose and ill-tempered man Sir Edward Coke, that 
this greatest master of English law that had yet ap- 
peared, took care to further his education, and affec- 
tionately addressed him as his son ? It is interest- 
ing to know that the founder of Rhode Island, who 
in his writings laid down the principle " that the 
sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in 
the consent of the people," thus sat in his youth at 
the feet of the illustrious judge who was sent to the 
tower for resisting the encroachments of arbitrary^ 
power. 

Roger Williams not only merits our admiration 
for his personal qualities, his intellectual culture 
was also generous and broad. By the favor of 
Coke, he was sent to the Charter-house, then re- 
cently founded by a liberal-minded London mer- 
chant, Thomas Sutton, but since become one of the 
most famous of the great schools of England. The 
chapel stands to-day, with the superb monument of 
the founder, precisely as it stood when Roger Wil- 
liams knelt beside it, reciting the impressive liturgy 
of the English church. , On the long roll in which 
his name ranks among the earliest, are written the 
names of Barrow, of Addison, of Steele, of John 
Wesley, of Blackstone, and to pass to our own time, 
of Grote, and of Thackeray ; and who that has lin- 
gered, with dimmed eye, over the chapters which 
describe the closing hours of Colonel Newcome, can 
forget how the memories of this place have been 
embalmed on the most nobly pathetic pages of Eng- 
lish romance ! After receiving the thorough class- 
ical training of the Charter-house, Roger Williams 



132 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

proceeded to Cambridge, where he was matriculated 
a pensioner of Pembroke College, in 1625, and took 
his degree as Bachelor of Arts in 1627. Cambridge 
was the great Puritan university. There most of 
the leading divines of the New England churches 
received their education. Thence came John Cot- 
ton, Chauncy, Buckley, John Eliot, Hooker, Norton, 
Hugh Peters, Shepard, Ward, and others of the 
men whose piety and learning did so much to give 
New England character its distinctive shape ; nor 
is there any reason to suppose that Roger Williams, 
while at Cambridge, was a less apt or less diligent 
scholar than any of these. 

How diligently these rare opportunities of culture 
were used, may be gathered from a glance at those 
with whom, afterwards, he stood on a footing of 
most familiar companionship. Through life his 
most trusted counselor was the wise, the discrimi- 
nating, the magnanimous Winthrop, who, he de- 
clares, "tenderly loved him to his last breath." 
Next we find him winning the warmest regard of 
young Harry Vane, like himself an enthusiast for 
ideal truth, misunderstood by the community in 
which his lot was cast, but a spirit touched to the 
finest issues, whom even his enemy Clarendon 
terms "a man of extraordinary parts," and whom 
Milton praised as a senator unsurpassed in Roman 
story. When the acquaintance of Williams with 
Vane began, we are not informed ; but it must have 
been soon after the latter's arrival in this country, 
since, in speaking of the settlement of Aquidneck, 
Williams says : " It was not price nor money that 
could have purchased Rhode Island. It was pur- 
chased by the love and favor which that honorable 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 1 33 

gentleman, Sir Harry Vane, and myself had with 
the great sachem Miantunnomi." The name of 
Roger Williams is peculiarly connected with the 
most brilliant statesman of the commonwealth ; for 
mainly through the friendly intervention of Vane 
the charter of the Providence plantations was ob- 
tained, so that to Vane, more directly than to Wil- 
liams, Rhode Island owes her actual political exist- 
ence. At the country-seat of Vane, Williams, when 
in England, was always a welcome guest. But in 
the circle of his chosen friends was one more fa- 
mous than Vane. During his second visit to Eng- 
land, we find him instructing John Milton in Dutch, 
who in return read him " many more languages." 
It is easy to surmise how two such kindred spirits 
were drawn together. When his " Bloudy Tenent " 
had appeared, in 1644, it had been ranked with Mil- 
ton's " Treatise on Divorce," as containing " most 
damnable doctrines." They had stood side by side 
in the great battle for freedom of thought, though 
even Milton, in the magnificent bursts of his '^ Lib- 
erty of Unlicensed Printing," did not advocate a 
liberty of conscience so complete and absolute as 
that claimed by Roger Williams. He seems to have 
had in mind rather toleration than perfect freedom. 
With the great Protector, too, the founder of Provi- 
dence was sometimes admitted to "close discourse." 
I need not pause to comment on the kind of man 
he must have been who was permitted even the oc- 
casional companionship of Vane, of Milton, and of 
Cromwell. 

One of the most grievous charges brought against 
Roger Williams is based on the apparent vacillation 
of his opinions. *' He had," said Cotton Mather, 



134 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

"a windmill in his head." But these changes were 
far less significant than is commonly supposed. 
With regard to the great principle with which his 
name is connected, he never wavered in the slight- 
est. On some minor points that entered into his 
controversy with Massachusetts, it is not unlikely 
that experience modified his views. But with his 
religious belief there was very little change. He 
was a sturdy, uncompromising separatist, when he 
renounced the communion of the Church of Eng- 
land, and such he remained to the day of his death. 
Warmly as he denied the theocratic theory of the 
churches of the Bay, he always cordially approved 
their "heavenly doctrine." In no heat of contro- 
versy was he ever accused of being a heretic. It is 
true that, having been for a brief period connected 
with the Baptists, he renounced their communion 
and lived for the rest of his days isolated from all 
visible church fellowship. Yet, when we consider 
what the religious conditions of the period were, we 
shall not censure him severely if, like Milton, he 

.- shrank from the Babel of sects that filled the age 
with their noise ; nor, if we call to mind how swift 

f and how startling were the transitions of that unset- 
tled time, will it surprise us to see that, like Vane, 

• Williams was led to look for the speedy revelation 
of a new heaven and a new earth. But whatever 
we may think of his speculative belief, respecting 
his practical zeal to do good there can be no dis- 
pute. We find him repeatedly interposing his be- 
nevolent offices to save from destruction by the 

- Indians the colony which refused him a passage 
even through its territory ; we find him interrupting 
his arduous labors in London to aid in providing 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. I35 

the suffering poor of that city with fuel ; above all, 
we find him at all times, on the land and on the sea, 
yearning to promote the spiritual welfare of the In- 
dians. Eliot has won the name of the Indian Apos- 
tle ; but ten years before Eliot preached his first 
sermon to the Indians, Roger Williams had conse- 
crated himself to this missionary work ; not sent out 
by a powerful and wealthy board, and followed with 
the prayers of thousands, but driven forth an exile, 
and selling his house even, " that he might do the 
natives good." 

To the seeker whose adventurous thought carried 
him further than any of his time in the exploration 
of a novel principle ; to the wise master-builder 
whose faith in this principle did not falter when 
charged with the responsibility of an experiment 
which to so many seemed subversive of social order ; 
to the scholar who, trained in the languages of the 
old world, wrought the first key for unlocking the 
dialects of the new ; to the philanthropist whose 
abounding charity recognized no distinction of race 
or tongue, we erect this statue ! Why need I say 
more } The muse of history has already written her 
imperishable record ; the marvelous touch, that en- 
dows marble and bronze with life, has set him before 
us with a reality that words can only feebly counter- 
feit ! 

An epoch is marked in the history of a commu- 
nity when it thus pauses to conquer forgetfulness. 
We rise to higher levels as we recognize the sacred- 
ness of the past ; as we commerce with the great and 
good who have gone before us, and whose examples 
are our most precious possession. And, still more 
is this the case, when we invoke the aid of art to in- 



136 ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF 

vigorate these ennobling influences, and when we 
consecrate to the departed, memorials whose very- 
presence among us breeds gracious and perpetual 
benediction. Let us rejoice that in making, to-day, 
this lavish offering, we have at the same time en- 
riched ourselves. Here have we placed our statue of 
Roger Williams, and here let it stand ; here in a se- 
clusion allowing the thoughtful study which its vari- 
ous excellence exacts ; here amid the fields which he 
once received from Canonicus ; here in solemn com- 
panionship with kindred dust ! Here let it stand ! 
Here let returning seasons greet it ; here let men 
as they rest from labor, here let children as they 
turn from play, gaze with reverence at him who 
chose rather to taste the bitterness of death than to 
act with a doubting conscience. 



NOTE. 

Roger Williams, according to the most trustworthy tradi- 
tion, was a native of Wales, and was born near the close of the 
sixteenth century. In a document dated July 21, 1679, ^^ 
speaks of himself as "being now near to fourscore years of 
age." During his youth, he lived for a time in London, where 
he attracted the notice of Coke. He was elected a scholar of 
the Charter-house, June 25, 1621 ; and was matriculated a pen- 
sioner of Pembroke College, Cambridge, July 7, 1625. He took 
the degree of Bachelor of Arts, January, 1627. His signature 
is still preserved in the subscription book of the University. 
From this date till he left England there is no record respect- 
ing him, but from an incidental statement in the " Bloudy 
Tenent yet more Bloudy" it has been surmised that he lived 
in Lincolnshire. He sailed from Bristol, with his wife Mary, 
in the ship Lyon, December i, 1630, and after a voyage of 
sixty-six days, arrived off Nantasket, February 5, 163 1. Ac- 
cording to his own account he was invited, soon after, to be- 



THE MONUMENT TO ROGER WILLIAMS. 1 3/ 

come teacher of the Boston church, in place of Wilson who 
was about returning to England, but declined the offer because 
he "durst not officiate to an unseparated people." The state- 
ment that he was admitted freeman, arose from the fact that 
another of the same name was in the colony, whose application 
was made nearly four months before the Lyon arrived. In 
April, 163 1, he was invited to the church at Salem, but the 
authorities interfered, and during the summer he went to Plym- 
outh, where he became assistant to Rev. Ralph Smith. While 
here he composed a " treatise " against the Patent, which was 
submitted to the examination of the magistrates in December, 
1633, and the author was cited to the next session of the court 
"to be censured," but on his expressing submission, the matter 
was dropped. Before the close of 1633, he returned to Salem, 
assisting the Rev. Mr. Skelton, but "in not any office." In 
August, 1634, after the death of Skelton, he was called to be 
teacher of the church. In November, 1634, he was summoned 
before the court for having broken his promise " in teaching 
publicly against the King's patent," but at the March session, 
proceedings were again suspended, on the ground that his 
action sprang from "scruple of conscience" rather than "sedi- 
tious principle." When the court met again, April 30, a new 
charge was brought against him of withstanding the freeman's 
oath. Early in the summer of 1635, the Salem church pro- 
ceeded with his ordination, which led to his being cited before 
the court, July 8, on the ground that " being under question 
for divers dangerous opinions," he had been called in " con- 
tempt of authority," to the office of teacher. A petition of the 
Salem men with reference to certain lands on Marblehead 
Neck was, on the same ground, refused. Availing himself of 
ecclesiastical right, Wilhams caused letters of admonition to 
be written by the Salem church to its sister churches, com- 
plaining of the " heinous sin " committed by the magistrates. 
When a majority of the church showed a disposition to recede 
from its position, he wrote a letter renouncing communion 
with them. At the September session of the court, when he 
had been cited to appear, no action was taken, and the court 
adjourned till October 8. At this time, Williams, when asked 
whether he was prepared to give satisfaction, "justified both 
these letters, and maintained all his opinions." In conse- 
quence, sentence was passed requiring him " to depart out of 



138 THE MONUMENT OF ROGER WILLIAMS. 

this jurisdiction within six weeks." According to Winthrop, 
this was done "the next morning," which would make the date 
of the sentence October 9, but the original record has no men- 
tion of any adjournment. On this point there has been a sin- 
gular confusion. Soon after, Williams was seized with severe 
illness, and the authorities allowed him to remain till spring, 
but as he began again to maintain his opinions " to company 
in his house," it was decided in January, 1636, to send him to 
England, when he fled to the woods. After wandering for 
fourteen weeks, in the spring of 1636, he began " to build and 
plant " at Seekonk, but in June changed his location and set- 
tled on the spot to which he gave the name of Providence. 
During the summer he interfered to prevent the Pequot league. 
In March, 1639, he was re-baptized by " one Holhman, a poor 
man, late of Salem," and united with Holliman and ten others 
in forming what was afterwards the First Baptist Church ; but 
after three or four months " he broke from the Society." In 
the summer of 1643 he sailed for England, devoting the leisure 
of his voyage to the preparation of his " Key into the Language 
of America." In March, 1644, he obtained the charter of the 
" Providence Plantations." In the same year he published, at 
London, his " Key," and in the year following the " Bloudy 
Tenent." Bound up with the latter was the "Examination" 
of Cotton's Letter, in which he incidentally presents his own 
view of the grounds of his banishment. In November, 165 1, 
he sailed for England the second time, and published, in the 
following year, " The Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy," the 
" Hirehng Ministry," and the " Experiments of Spiritual Life 
and Health." Early in the summer of 1654 he returned to 
Providence. From September, 1654, till May, 1657, he served 
as President of the Colony. In August, 1672, occurred his 
debate at Newport with the Quakers, a full account of which 
he pubHshed in 1676. He died some time between January 
18, and May 10, 1683. According to custom, he was buried 
on his own grounds, not far from his house and the spot where 
he landed. The grave was distinctly marked at the beginning 
of the present century. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT 
HOPE. 

AN ADDRESS AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVER- 
SARY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN 
OF BRISTOL, R. I., DELIVERED 

SEPTEMBER 24, 1880. 



We have met to commemorate the founding of 
this ancient town. Two hundred years have fled 
since the hearths of our fathers were planted here. 
Well nigh seven generations have completed their 
mortal term since these broad streets were opened, 
since this spacious common, on which we are gath- 
ered, was set apart for public use. As we enter 
upon the third century of our history, we pause, 
for a brief space, to confess the debt which every 
community that has done anything worthy of re- 
membrance owes to itself, and which no community 
swayed by generous sentiments, and mindful of its 
own best interests, can refuse to pay. There is no 
more becoming impulse than that which brings us 
hither. The most elevated instincts of our nature 
are enlisted in such a service. The deep and wide- 
spread interest which this occasion has awakened, 
this great multitude before me, afford convincing 
proof that we are not insensible to the obligations 
which our connection with a community like this 
imposes. We have gladly heeded the summons to 



140 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

this festival ; we have trodden with willing feet 
these familiar paths. It is a festival in which we 
cannot join without emotion. It has for all of us 
a meaning w^hich no ordinary festival can have. 
Amid the ringing of bells, and the inspiring strains 
of music, we can none of us forget that we have 
come to a spot hallowed by our most affecting mem- 
ories. Here we were born ; here by the fireside we 
heard the first accents of affection ; here in the 
school-room we learned our earliest lessons ; here 
in the house of God we were taught the consoling 
truths that alone compensate for the losses which 
a day like this brings so vividly to mind. A cloud 
of witnesses, invisible to mortal eye, looks down 
upon us. Everything around us invests these serv- 
ices with an exalted and religious sentiment. There 
are no ties more sacred than those of which we are 
now reminded. We have come to the home of our 
childhood ; to the graves of our fathers. The words 
of Holy Writ leap unbidden to our lips : " If I for- 
get Thee, may my right hand forget her cunning ; 
if I do not remember Thee, may my tongue cleave 
to the roof of my mouth ! " 

The circumstances under which we meet may well 
call for our heartfelt gratulation. We have come to 
a spot beautiful for situation, lovely indeed at all 
times, but never more lovely than at this season, 
when lingering summer bathes the landscape in the 
pensive beauty that so well befits the strain of 
thought in which we cannot help indulging. We 
have come at a time when we may turn without 
effort from our common avocations and cares, a time 
of great prosperity, when our land is teeming with- 
abundant harvests, when, after years of weary de- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 141 

pression, commerce and industry show everywhere 
signs of healthy revival, when our public credit is 
restored, when peace reigns in all our borders. No 
dreg of bitterness poisons our overflowing cup. Nor 
should the fact that we are now engaged in one of 
the great periodical contests which determine the 
political character of our government, when through- 
out its length and breadth the land is stirred with 
the eager strife of conflicting parties, lessen in the 
least our interest in these services. To one who 
rightly apprehends the nature of our political sys- 
tem, and who correctly estimates the real sources 
of its strength, they will seem invested with addi- 
tional significance. For even amid the excitement 
of a national election, and with the inspiring spec- 
tacle before us of fifty millions of freemen choosing 
their chief magistrate under the wise and regulated 
restraints of constitutional law, we may well turn 
our gaze, for a few moments, to those ancient sources 
from which the broad stream of our national life 
has flowed ; we may well remind ourselves that our 
local institutions form, at once, the foundation and 
safeguard of our federal system ; that from the 
broad support of numberless scattered municipali- 
ties like this, whose founding we commemorate to- 
day, springs the splendid arch that gilds with prom- 
ise the future of American civilization. Let us 
never forget that American liberty had its cradle in 
towns; that here the earliest lessons of self-gov- 
ernment were learned. And let us rest assured 
that so long as the traditions of these local rights 
are zealously cherished American liberty will never 
be subverted. 

Nor can I count it inopportune that our services 



142 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

SO nearly coincide, in point of time, with the great 
and splendid commemoration, which, during the past 
week, has concentrated the gaze of the entire nation 
upon the chief city of New England. At first sight, 
indeed, it may well seem that our modest festival 
cannot fail to suffer from too close proximity to an- 
other so similar as to provoke comparison, and yet 
so much more impressive in its historical associa- 
tions, and so much more elaborate in its attending 
circumstances. Still even this seeming disadvan- 
tage, when we reflect a moment, gives additional 
meaning to our celebration. There is a peculiar 
fitness in having one so soon succeed the other. 
For it serves the more forcibly to call attention to 
that feature in our early history which gave this 
town its distinctive character, and drew the broad 
line of distinction between this settlement and the 
earlier settlements upon the shores of the Narra- 
gansett. It reminds us that Bristol was the off- 
spring of Boston. At the ripe age of fifty years the 
sturdy Puritan mother gave birth to this beautiful 
child. It was the sagacity of Boston merchants 
that first saw the admirable adaptation of this com- 
modious harbor to the purposes of commerce, it was 
the public spirit of Boston merchants that reserved 
for a remote posterity the ample provisions of these 
streets and squares, it was the intelligence and piety 
of Boston merchants that planted by this shore the 
institutions of education and religion which their 
Puritan training had taught them to reverence, and 
which they brought with them to their new home, 
as their most precious heritage. Here, so far as 
their circumstances would permit, they sought to 
build another Boston ; and surely as they gazed on 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 43 

the fair surroundings of this favored spot, as they 
surveyed the gentle slope of the ground, as they fol- 
lowed the graceful course of the silver bay, as they 
pictured, perchance, the possible success that might 
attend their enterprise, they may well have been 
pardoned if they sometimes exclaimed, — 

" O matre pulchra filia pulchrior ! " 

Two hundred years do not cover a long period 
when we reckon the centuries of the world's history, 
yet two hundred years carry us back to a time when 
much that now seems majestic and venerable ex- 
isted only in the womb of futurity. The faded ban- 
ner that was borne in our procession to-day, pre- 
cious as the gift of one of the first proprietors, is 
the symbol of a municipal organization that went 
into operation more than a century before our Fed- 
eral Constitution was adopted. When this town 
was founded the kingdom of Prussia had not been 
established, the empire of Russia had not become 
a European power. Charles the Second was still 
degrading the crown of England, the fierce contest 
caused by the Exclusion Bill was raging, the great 
revolution had not taken place which drove the Stu- 
arts from the throne. Our town government is, 
therefore, older than the English constitution as it 
now exists, older than the Bill of Rights, older than 
the Act of Settlement, older than the great division 
of parties that ran through the reigns of Anne and 
the Georges, older than the England of Bolingbroke, 
of Walpole, and of Pitt. Two hundred years of the 
quiet annals of a neighborhood like this do not, it 
is true, appeal to the imagination like two hundred 
years of the history of a famous state. The stage 



144 ^^^ SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

is small, and the interests seem trivial, the 'actors 
are not heroes and statesmen and kings. But it 
is, after all, a histor}?- that touches us more nearly 
than the plots of rulers, or the devastating march 
of armies. It is the history of the human life which 
we all are leading. And when we reflect what two 
hundred years of the history of a community like 
this really represent, when we consider the inesti- 
mable benefit diffused by a well-ordered social sys- 
tem, the wholesome restraints of law, the sweets of 
domestic life, the elevating influence of education, 
the priceless blessings of devout religious instruc- 
tion, the influence of good example transmitted from 
generation to generation, we shall feel that two hun- 
dred years of history like this are as worthy of our 
study as much that fills a larger and more preten- 
tious page. 

When the first houses were built upon this spot, 
two of which still remain to attest the solid work- 
manship of our fathers, there already existed four 
settlements on Narragansett Bay. Forty-four years 
earlier Roger Williams had undertaken, upon the 
banks of the Mooshausic, the unique and memorable 
experiment of founding a community upon the prin- 
ciple of obedience to the civil magistrates only in 
civil things. A little later the great Antinomian 
controversy had driven to the island of Aquidneck 
another company, who, planting themselves just at 
the northern end, had afterwards removed to the 
unrivaled harbor which excited the admiration of 
the Florentine navigator, Verazzano, more than a 
century before ; and almost directly opposite, upon 
the western shore of the bay, that singular enthusi- 
ast, Samuel Gorton, after coming into collision with 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 45 

the authorities both at Providence and Newport, 
had founded Warwick. In the year 1663 the three 
settlements had been united under the charter of 
Charles the Second. 

The course of events which reserved this territory 
for a later occupation, and for a different jurisdiction, 
forms one of the most interesting chapters in the 
history of New England. The neck of land on which 
this town was built, called by the English Mount 
Hope, but known to the Indians as Pokanoket, was 
the last recognized possession of the aborigines in 
this portion of the country. Here was their final 
refuge ; here began the great struggle which resulted 
in their overthrow ; here was witnessed the last 
tragic act in the bloody strife. I shall not transgress 
the proper limits of my subject if I glance briefly at 
events which were directly connected with the found- 
ing of the town, and which explain the distinctive 
characteristics of its early history. It is only from 
a review of these events that we can understand 
how this community presented, at the outset, such 
marked contrast to the other settlements upon our 
bay. 

Whether, as has been claimed by enthusiastic 
Scandinavian scholars, the Northmen ever visited 
these shores, is a question we need not discuss. 
There seems, indeed, no reason to doubt the sub- 
stantial truth of the narratives which describe the 
adventurous voyages of Biorn and Leif and Thor- 
finn ; we may accept without hesitation the claim 
that they discovered Greenland, that they cruised 
along the coast of Labrador and Nova Scotia, that 
they pursued their dangerous navigation as far south 
as Cape Cod and Narragansett Bay. But when we 



V 



146 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

seek from any of their own statements to determine 
the precise localities they visited we are involved in 
insuperable difficulties. The attempt from a pas- 
sage of doubtful meaning respecting the length of 
the day at Vinland, where they wintered, to identify 
its latitude with Rhode Island, can hardly be ac- 
cepted as conclusive. The most that we can safely 
say, is, that they may have been here ; that there is 
nothing improbable in the supposition that they may 
have found in this bay their winter refuge. But if 
they did they left no trace behind them. Their dar- 
ing enterprise had no influence whatever upon sub- 
sequent events. To suppose, as some have done, 
that the name of the neighboring summit is the cor- 
ruption of the Norse word with which they marked 
their resting-place, and that it was preserved in the 
traditions of an alien race for more than six hundred 
years, is to carry credulity beyond the limit of com- 
mon sense. We may please ourselves with the fancy 
that the dark barks which arrested the troubled gaze 
of Charlemagne, which at a later period carried 
terror to the coasts of France, and pushed up the 
Seine to the very gates of Paris, may have anchored 
in these waters ; a halo of romance will surround 
these shores if we connect them with those adven- 
turous vikings ; but the course of events that claims 
our serious attention belongs to a far later period. 
Let us leave these obscure legends and pass to the 
region of unquestioned fact. We shall find enough 
here to invest this familiar region with a singular 
and enduring interest. 

At the beginning of the authentic history of our 
town, we are confronted with the most venerable 
figure among the aborigines of New England. When 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 47 

the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they were told that 
the desolate region around them belonged to the 
great sachem, Massasoit, whose sway extended from 
Cape Cod to the shores of the Narragansett. With 
him their first treaty was concluded. In an unfin- 
ished building near Plymouth, the floor spread with 
a rug and cushion to give dignity to the proceedings, 
were conducted the simple negotiations which are 
memorable as the beginning of American diplomacy. 
The treaty was one of alliance, and not one of sub- 
jection, and the sachem was assured that ''King 
James would esteem him as his friend and ally." In 
the following summer, the first passed by the Pil- 
grims in New England, envoys were sent by the 
colonists to visit the sachem at Pokanoket. The 
narrative of this visit, the earliest ever made by Eng- 
lishmen of which any account has been preserved, 
while it presents a vivid picture of the squalid sur- 
roundings of the Wampanoag chief, furnishes at the 
same time abundant evidence of his hospitality and 
kindness. It is impossible to read it without recog- 
nizing in Massasoit a genuine courtesy. His guests 
came upon him unexpectedly, and " he was both 
grieved and ashamed that he could no better enter- 
tain them." In this visit the compact already con- 
cluded was renewed, and the relations between the 
two races thus established upon a permanent basis. 
For more than fifty years it was faithfully observed. 
Long as Massasoit lived no charge was made that 
its stipulations were either broken or evaded. He 
lived to see his territories melt away before the 
steady inroad of the whites, till at length, at the close 
of his long reign, he found himself shut up to the 
narrow peninsula of Pokanoket. But he remained 



148 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

to the last true to the compact he had made. And 
when we remember on what flimsy pretexts the most 
Christian kings of Europe, Charles II., and Louis 
XIV., violated their most sacred engagements, shall 
we withhold some tribute of respect to this pagan 
chief } 

With the death of the kindly and faithful Massa- 
soit, we pass to the most tragic chapter of our story. 
The causes of the bloody struggle which, fifteen 
years later, plunged New England into mourning 
and wrested this, their last refuge, from the Wam- 
panoags, still remain obscure. From his first acces- 
sion to power, Philip, for some reason, seems to have 
excited the suspicion of the Plymouth authorities. He 
was summoned before them, and though he earnestly 
protested that he knew of no plot nor conspiracy 
against them, he was compelled to sign an instru- 
ment by which he acknowledged himself a subject 
of the King of England. When more positive 
charges were brought against him, five years later, 
he repeated with great fervor his protestations of 
innocency and of faithfulness to the English. And 
when, after four years more had passed, new appre- 
hensions were awakened, he desired to renew his 
covenant with his ancient friends, and freely engaged 
to resign to the government of New Plymouth all 
his English arms. As Philip was still accused of 
evading this agreement, he was once more summoned 
before the authorities and compelled to acknowledge 
himself not only subject to the King of England, 
but to the government of the Plymouth colony. It 
is not difficult to conceive how this increasing pres- 
sure of a foreign authority must have affected a 
haughty spirit. The long-estabhshed relation be- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 49 

tween Massasoit and the English was now completely 
reversed. Massasoit had been treated as an equal ; 
Philip was reduced to the condition of a subject. 
Massasoit had been regarded with confidence ; Philip, 
whether justly or unjustly, was viewed with constant 
distrust. That the sachem, doubtless ignorant of 
the full force of the submissions he had made, and 
only conscious that a net was being skillfully woven 
about him, was wholly free from blame, no one v/ould 
venture to affirm, but that the authorities of Plym- 
outh were pushing matters with too hard a hand, 
was the manifest opinion of their Massachusetts 
brethren. These doubted whether the engagement 
of Philip imported more than " a friendly and neigh- 
borly correspondency." 

In the cabinet of the Rhode Island Historical 
Society there is preserved a curious paper which 
purports to give the substance of a reply made by 
Philip to his friend, John Borden, of Portsmouth, 
who sought to dissuade him from engaging in the 
war. The statement was not committed to writing 
till many years after the sachem's death, and cannot 
claim the authority of a historical document. Yet 
undoubtedly it preserves the tradition respecting 
the causes of the war that lingered in Philip's own 
neighborhood, and among those who knew him best. 
While the language belongs to a later period, the 
general representation may be accepted as correct. 
In this reply the sachem contrasts the reception 
which his father had extended to the English with 
the ungenerous treatment to which he had been 
himself subjected. Unfounded charges had been 
brought against him, and he had been compelled to 
part with his territory to make restitution for in- 



I50 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

juries that he could not prevent. Thus tract after 
tract was gone till only a small part remained. " I 
am determined," said he, " not to live till I have no 
country." 

That the Indians, in the main, were unfairly 
treated, there is, indeed, no evidence. Where the 
Pilgrims landed the territory had been depopulated 
by a pestilence, and they interfered with no rights 
by bringing once more under cultivation a desolate 
and deserted tract. The subsequent acquisitions of 
the settlers were made by purchase, to which the 
natives, for the most part, gave their free consent. 
And in their transactions the authorities took special 
care to guard the Indians from imposition. Yet the 
policy was avowed of crowding them upon narrow 
peninsulas, and they saw their territory continually 
wasting away. And it may be questioned how far 
the chiefs had authority to alienate the lands of 
their tribe, and how far they understood the full 
meaning of the transfer they made. Still less could 
they comprehend the nature of the allegiance which 
they were compelled to swear to a sovereign who 
lived three thousand miles away. Added to this 
were the unconcealed suspicion and contempt with 
which they were regarded, and which led the whites 
to insist strenuously '' on the distance which is to be 
observed betwixt Christians and barbarians." 

It is an interesting fact that we find the most 
favorable representations of Philip's character in the 
region where he lived, and among those who had the 
best opportunity for judging him. Thus the earliest 
historian of Rhode Island, Callender, tells us that 
Philip entered reluctantly upon the war, and that he 
shed tears when he heard that the first blood was 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 151 

spilled. To the same effect is the tradition of his 
grateful treatment of the Leonards. Though his or- 
dinary residence was at Mount Hope, in the summer 
time he frequently found his way to Taunton. Here 
he became acquainted with this family, and received 
many acts of kindness at their hands. When the 
war broke out his gratitude saved Taunton from 
destruction. '' You have made him ready to die," 
said one of his men to the English commander, " for 
you have killed or taken all his relations." It has 
been urged against him as a reproach, that, when 
his prospect darkened elsewhere, he did not join 
himself to the Eastern Indians ; but is it not a touch- 
ing trait in his character, that when wife and child 
had been taken from him, he turned back to die in 
his own home } 

It is claimed by some that Philip of Pokanoket is 
simply a hero of romance ; that fancy has arrayed 
with fictitious majesty a squalid savage, whose dwell- 
ing was a sty. No doubt many of the representa- 
tions of his character are incorrect. It is folly to 
speak of him as a great warrior, a penetrating states- 
man, a mighty prince. Such exaggerated language 
does him gross injustice, for it applies to him the 
standards of a wholly different social state. There is 
no proof that he was at the head of a great con- 
spiracy, or that he possessed the capacity of inflam- 
ing his race with a common impulse. But we are 
equally wide of the mark when we picture him, in 
the coarse epithets of Church, as '^a doleful, great, 
naked, dirty beast." In spite of all detraction, he 
remains the most picturesque and striking figure in 
Indian history. His tragic fate lends a sad interest 
to yonder mount. We are standing on soil that was 



152 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

wrested from him ; we are enjoying privileges which 
were purchased by his ruin ; but can we pass a 
harsh judgment on this hero of a lost cause, who 
fell, in an unequal fight, by a traitor's hand, and 
whose corpse was insulted by an ungenerous foe ? 

By the overthrow of Philip, the Mount Hope 
lands were, for the first time, thrown open to the 
occupation of the English, but the question was yet 
to be determined in whom the title to the newly- 
conquered territory was vested. The manner in 
which this question was settled forms the most curi- 
ous episode in our early history. We can hardly 
fancy a more striking contrast than between the 
wilds of Pokanoket and the sumptuous palace of 
Whitehall, between the stern, resolute men who 
were here laying the foundations of a new English 
empire, and the gay and dissolute throng who 
formed the court of Charles the Second. Our story 
carries us to the Privy Council chamber, where the 
dull routine of business was at this time so often 
lighted up by the wit of Shaftesbury. Among those 
whose occupation it was to amuse the King, was a 
dramatic poet named John Crowne. He is said to 
have been first brought to the notice of the Queen 
through the dislike which Rochester cherished for 
Dryden, and to have gained the favor of the good- 
natured monarch by a mask which had been per- 
formed before the court. Reckoning on his favor, 
Crowne came forward with a petition for the Mount 
Hope lands. His father, who had purchased an 
estate in Nova Scotia, had been impoverished by the 
cession of that province to the French, and upon 
this circumstance the poet based his claim to res- 
titution. The matter was brought before the Privy 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 53 

Council, who directed that, before any action should 
be taken inquiry should be made respecting the title 
to the territory. Plymouth claimed the lands as ly- 
ing within her patent, and in this view the agents of 
Massachusetts concurred. The two Rhode Island 
agents, on the other hand, maintained that the tract, 
up to the recent war, had belonged to the Sachem 
Philip, and that no corporation in New England had 
any title to it. Although the Plymouth authorities had 
sought to gain the favor of the King by sending to 
him the greater part of the ornaments and treasures 
of Philip, the Privy Council adopted the Rhode Island 
view. But, at the same time, they recommended that 
the lands be granted to Plymouth, reserving only to 
the Crown, by way of quit rent, seven beaver skins to 
be paid yearly at Windsor Castle. No other lands 
in the colony were held upon this tenure. 

The title to the newly-conquered lands having 
been thus confirmed to Plymouth, measures were at 
once taken to dispose of them. The most powerful 
reason which had led the Plymouth authorities to 
claim the territory was that it '-'■ was well-accommo- 
dated for the settlement of sea-port towns." The 
evident advantages which it possessed as a commer- 
cial mart could not long remain unnoticed. On the 
fourteenth of September, 1680, corresponding, if we 
allow for the difference of style, to the day selected 
for these services, and in consideration of the sum 
of three hundred pounds, the Mount Hope lands 
were conveyed to four citizens of Boston : John. 
Walley, Nathaniel Byfield, Stephen Burton, and Na- 
thaniel Oliver. By the terms of the sale, a " town 
for trade " was to be at once established. To pro- 
mote this end extraordinary privileges were granted-, 



154 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

and most liberal provisions were made. The four 
proprietors reserved to themselves an eighth each, 
and proceeded to dispose of the remainder. The 
new settlement was exempted from all colonial taxes 
for five years, the privilege of sending deputies to 
the General Court was conceded to it, a local court 
was established, and it was provided that it should 
be the shire-town of a new county to be established. 
The tract was laid out on a plan of which up to this 
time there had been no example. In contrast with 
the crowded streets of Boston it presented these 
broad and regular avenues, but like Boston it had a 
public common reserved in the centre of the town, 
while six hundred acres, in addition, were devoted 
to the general improvement. It is impossible to 
glance at these provisions without recognizing the 
fact that the first proprietors of this territory were 
men of liberal views and large public spirit. While 
engaged in an enterprise which their own private 
advantage had no doubt suggested, they scorned to 
look at it in the light of mere private and selfish in- 
terest. The generous conception which they formed 
of their undertaking received its reward. The best 
class of settlers was attracted, and in five years, 
where had been a wilderness, there stood the most 
flourishing town in the colony. 

The great purpose which they had in view was 
intimated in almost their earliest corporate act. On 
September i, 1681, the people assembled together 
and agreed that " the name of this town shall be 
Bristol." The only reason that can be assigned 
for such a proceeding is that at this time Bristol 
was, next to London, the most important seat of 
maritime commerce in the mother country, and in 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 55 

founding their new port of trade, the settlers of this 
town wished to borrow some of the associations of 
such a famous mart. We may derive a natural sat- 
isfaction from the reflection, that their confidence in 
the experiment they had undertaken gave us even 
this trifling connection with a city which, though 
stripped in part of its commercial eminence, is still 
one of the most beautiful in England, the city from 
which Sebastian Cabot sailed on the voyage that 
resulted in the discovery of the American conti- 
nent, the city which Edmund Burke represented in 
Parliament, when he vindicated, in strains of unsur- 
passed eloquence, the rights of the colonies. In 
several striking particulars a resemblance between 
the towns might be traced. The distinctive char- 
acter of the new enterprise, that which marked it so 
strongly from the earlier settlements upon the bay, 
is expressed in this proceeding. The founders of 
Bristol were not, like the settlers of Providence and 
Newport, exiles for conscience' sake, smarting with 
sense of wrong, and cherishing a bitter feeling of 
resentment against the community from which they 
had been driven ; on the contrary, they were men 
of wealth and standing, of high consideration in the 
colony which they voluntarily left, for which they 
cherished the most affectionate attachment, and 
whose institutions they zealously labored to perpet- 
uate. In coming here they were not seeking for 
any larger religious liberty, for that they already en- 
joyed in as great a measure as they deemed consis- 
tent with their own good ; they were not aiming to 
emancipate themselves from any restraints of law. 
They came here, under due authority, to establish a 
town for trade, and they sought, from the outset, to 



156 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

surround themselves with all the sanctions of social 
order. 

Every community is stamped with the impress 
of its founders. Who, we naturally ask, were the 
men to whom Bristol owes its origin } The four 
original proprietors, with one exception, were act- 
ual settlers, and became earnestly identified with 
the interests of the town. Mr. Oliver sold his 
share to Nathan Hayman, another leading merchant 
of Boston, who soon after died. The names of the 
remaining three are written in enduring characters 
on our early annals. Of Stephen Burton less is 
known than of the others, but he is said to have 
been bred at Oxford, and as recording officer of the 
county he filled a responsible position until his 
death in 1692. John Walley, whose name stands 
first on the Grand Deed, was the son of an Eng- 
lish clergyman, and held high rank in the Massa- 
chusetts Colony. While devoting himself with suc- 
cess to mercantile pursuits, he was called at vari- 
ous times to discharge important public duties. He 
was a member of the Council, a Judge of the Su- 
perior Court, and had command of the land forces 
in the expedition of Sir William Phipps. These 
great trusts were executed with an ability and fidel- 
ity which gained him universal respect. During his 
residence in Bristol he stood always among the 
foremost in promoting every public interest. His 
substantial dwelUng still remains among us. Near 
the close of his life he returned to Boston, where he 
died in 171 2. But the most prominent and influen- 
tial of the original proprietors yet remains to be 
mentioned. Nathaniel Byfield was also the son of 
an English clergyman, a member of the famous 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 157 

Westminster Assembly. His mother was sister of 
the upright and courageous Bishop Juxon, who at- 
tended Charles I. upon the scaffold. He landed at 
Boston only six years before the purchase of the 
Mount Hope lands. Coming to this town with the 
first settlers, he remained here for nearly half a 
century, choosing for his home the beautiful pen- 
insula on the opposite side of the harbor, the greater 
part of which belonged to his estate. Like Walley 
he returned to Boston in his old age, and died there 
in 1733. His remains rest in the old Granary Bur- 
ial Ground. When Bristol was incorporated it was 
a part of Plymouth Colony, but after the union of 
Plymouth with Massachusetts, in 1690, an ampler 
field was opened to its citizens. Colonel Byfield 
was several times elected Speaker of the House of 
Representatives ; for many years he was a member 
of the Provincial Council ; for a long period he pre- 
sided in the County Court ; from no less than three 
English sovereigns he received a commission as 
Judge in Admiralty. In the notice called forth by 
his death, he is described as a man of great courage, 
vigor, and activity ; of plain and instructive con- 
versation, and of unquestionable faithfulness and 
honesty. Nothing is- more to his credit than the 
fact that during the Witchcraft delusion, which re- 
mains such a dark spot upon the fame of Massa- 
chusetts, he had the courage to oppose and de- 
nounce it. He was a man of strong convictions ; 
he was engaged in bitter controversies ; and he did 
not escape the aspersions which were as freely lav- 
ished in that day as in ours. But when his long 
and useful life was ended, his character and public 
services called forth unqualified eulogium. In this 



158 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

community his memory has always been gratefully 
cherished. To no one has Bristol been so much in- 
debted. To him, more than to any other, we owe 
these broad and beautiful streets; to him we are 
indebted for this common on which we stand ; to 
his foresight and generosity was due the early pro- 
vision for schools, which has been such a material 
aid in the cause of public education. Fitted by his 
eminent abilities for the highest positions in the 
colony, he was never unmindful of his obligations 
to the community in which he lived. And with 
great appropriateness, when the High School was 
erected, a few years ago, the town decided that it 
should bear the name of Byfield. No nobler memo- 
rial can be erected to the dead than a memorial 
like this which is a perpetual blessing to the living, 
and no more worthy example can be held up to the 
generations of children who shall receive their train- 
ing there, than the example of one who in the pur- 
suit of his private interests never neglected the 
public good. Well may we be proud to enroll such 
names as Walley and Byfield among our founders ! 
I have called attention to the fact that the set- 
tlement of Bristol was essentially a commercial en- 
terprise. At first sight, no doubt, this feature in 
its history seems to detract from the significance 
of the undertaking. Especially in comparison with 
the neighboring towns, it seems to lack those char- 
acteristics which awaken the most enthusiastic in- 
terest. We cannot claim that on this soil, so dear 
to all of us, any novel truth was evolved, or any 
great principles defended. The fame which justly 
belongs to Providence and to Aquidneck, does 
not belong to us. Our early records do not bear 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 59 

the names of any martyrs for conscience, of any 
pioneers in the vindication of spiritual truth. We 
have no Roger WiUiams upon whose statue we can 
gaze with reverence, we have no Anne Hutchinson, 
whose clear perception of first principles may extort 
our admiration, and whose pathetic fate, after so 
many years have passed, must excite our warmest 
sympathy. We are forced to confess the absence 
in our local annals of those elements which lend to 
history its highest and most absorbing charm. But 
there is another side to all this which we must not 
overlook. In the complex system under which the 
human race is working out its destiny, it seems to 
be the rule that an advantage in one direction is 
always purchased by the sacrifice of some corre- 
sponding advantage in another. There are two 
great principles that control the movements of soci- 
ety, the principle of progress, and the principle of 
order. If we reckon it a blessing to enjoy an un- 
checked liberty, if we count it a privilege to dwell 
in a community where there is no restraint upon 
the expression of opinion, where every one is free 
to follow his own course, and to attain the largest 
measure of individual development and individual 
action, we must on the other hand admit that there 
is some advantage in an orderly society, some ben- 
efit to be derived from connection with a community 
where the common interests are not disregarded, 
where mutual obligations receive full recognition, 
and where the claims of positive truth are not for- 
gotten in the assertion of the rights of private judg- 
ment. 

It is impossible not to contemplate v/ith admira- 
tion the early history of the State of which, for near 



l60 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

a century and a half, we' have been a loyal part ; 
not to gaze with reverence at the little community 
which, in an adverse age, had it in its heart "to 
hold forth a lively experiment that a most flourish- 
ing civil State may stand and best be maintained 
with a full liberty of religious concernments ; " and 
which in an age when toleration was hardly known, 
boldly affirmed that not toleration merely, but com- 
plete religious freedom, was the right of every hu- 
man being ; but it is impossible to read the history 
of Rhode Island and not to recognize the fact that 
those who drank of this great cup of liberty were 
compelled to pay a heavy price. When they threw 
their doors wide open to the distressed in conscience 
of every name, when they held out so boldly the 
alluring bait of exemption from all external re- 
straints, they drew together elements so incongru- 
ous, so inharmonious, so discordant, that even the 
invincible patience of Roger Williams at length re- 
coiled from " such an infinite liberty of conscience." 
The extremely democratic basis upon w^hich the 
body politic was rested, while it reduced the func- 
tions of government to the very narrowest limits, at 
the same time left the control of affairs in the hands 
of the least intelligent portion of the population. 
While it cannot be said that the first settlers were 
insensible to the importance of education, still edu- 
cation never received any generous public support. 
The complete separation effected between church 
and state, by remitting the support of religious in- 
stitutions to a community divided, beyond all previ- 
ous example, in religious sentiment, deprived them 
of the inestimable benefit of an educated clergy. In 
the town which Williams founded, and to which he 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. l6l 

gave a name expressive of his reliance upon divine 
help, no place of public worship existed until the 
beginning of the following century. Freedom of 
every kind prevailed in unexampled measure, but 
an enlarged public spirit, an intelligent appreciation 
of the higher interests of the social body, a recog- 
nition of what was due from the individual to the 
community of which he formed a part, were not 
then traits of Rhode Island character. 

The Puritan colonies of Plymouth and Massachu- 
setts, but more especially the. latter, stood in strik- 
ing contrast with all this. Firmly knit in religious 
faith, making no pretense whatever of toleration, 
often harsh in their treatment of dissenters, they 
were eminent for public spirit, and showed the char- 
acteristics of homogeneous and highly organized 
communities. Led by their peculiar theory to in- 
vest the State with the largest powers, and ally it 
with all the supreme concerns of life, they regarded 
no political duties as more sacred and more imper- 
ative than those connected with the promotion of 
education and the maintenance of pure religion. 
The public support accorded to religious institutions 
secured for every town the services of a well edu- 
cated minister. On the other hand, this close alli- 
ance of church and state gave additional import to 
civil obligations. Public functions were held in high 
esteem, magistrates were regarded with reverence, 
and even the ordinary duties of the citizen were dis- 
charged in a religious spirit. Equally in civil and 
religious things the Puritan viewed himself as living 
unto God. 

Coming, as they did, from a Puritan colony, the 
founders of Bristol did not seek in their new home 



1 62 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

to throw off the Puritan traditions in which they 
had been trained. They walked with undeviating 
steps in the faith to which they had been accus- 
tomed. They came to establish a town for trade, 
but they did not for a moment forget the higher con- 
ditions on which the welfare of every community 
depends, and without which material prosperity can 
only prove, in the end, a curse. Though engaged 
in a commercial enterprise, all their proceedings 
evinced a noble and conscientious recognition of the 
fact that society is bound by obligations which tran- 
scend all private and selfish interests. I have al- 
ready alluded to the liberal provision, made at the 
settlement of the town, for the promotion of educa- 
tion. Almost their first care was to secure the serv- 
ices of "an able schoolmaster." And by a subse- 
quent vote, by which a small additional fee was ex- 
acted from children who studied Latin, it appears 
that the course of study was not confined to com- 
mon branches, but embraced the classics. But still 
more characteristic was their concern for the sup- 
port of religion. When the town was laid out 
lands were set apart for the support of the ministry, 
and in the articles of agreement between the orig- 
inal proprietors and the settlers it was expressly 
stipulated that each should pay his proportion for 
erecting a meeting-house, and a home for the min- 
ister. At the very first town meeting, before their 
own dwellings had been closed against the winter 
wind, they voted to carry the latter part of this 
agreement into effect. For a short time they wor- 
shipped in a private house, a house whose sturdy 
frame, solid and unyielding as the creed of its build- 
ers, still defies decay. As soon as arrangements 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 63 

could be completed, they proceeded to erect a meet- 
ing-house. The massive timbers were cut from the 
common about us. It stood on the site of yonder 
Court House, and in it, for a hundred years, our 
fathers assembled to worship God. Around it were 
the graves of the first settlers, the most hallowed 
associations gathered about it, and we can but mar- 
vel at the stupidity which sacrificed that sacred and 
commanding site. According to well authenticated 
tradition, the building was square in shape, having 
two rows of windows, with a roof rising to the cen- 
tre, and surmounted by a cupola and bell. The in- 
terior was surrounded by a double row of galleries, 
and the floor was covered, as time went on, with 
square pews, through the rounds of whose oaken 
doors the children sought relief from the tedium of 
the protracted services. I know it is the habit of 
some to express contempt for the old-fashioned 
New England meeting-house. But if the principle 
laid down by the highest authorities on architecture 
is right, that all genuine and noble building has its 
origin in actual needs, and finds the measure of its 
excellence in its adaptation to the use intended ; if 
the Grecian temple, the Gothic minster, the feudal 
castle, derive their charm from their conformity to 
this fundamental law, then our Puritan fathers built 
wisely and well. They built according to their 
means, and with reference to their wants. Their 
plain meeting-houses harmonized with their simple 
worship. To the eye of taste they are far more ven- 
erable and far more interesting than the more am- 
bitious structures with which they have so often 
been supplanted. 

The men who made such liberal provision for the 



164 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

support of public worship were not likely to be in- 
different to the ministrations under which they sat. 
Exalting the pulpit to such supreme rank, they 
cherished a not less exalted ideal of religious teach- 
ing. Accustomed to accord the minister the first 
place in the community, they exacted, in return, the 
highest qualification. After one unsuccessful exper- 
iment they secured for their first settled pastor a 
renowned scholar, who brought to the infant settle- 
ment the ripest discipline of the Old World. Son of 
a wealthy London citizen, he received his early train- 
ing at the famous St. Paul's school, which John 
Colet, the friend of Erasmus, founded ; the school in 
w^hich Milton acquired the rudiments of his match- 
less scholarship. Proceeding at the early age of 
fifteen to Oxford, he won a distinguished rank, and 
was rewarded with a fellowship at Wadham College. 
A conscientious Non-conformist, he came to this 
country in 1686. It was said of him by one well 
qualified to judge, "that hardly ever a more univer- 
sally learned person trod the American strand." It 
is true that he remained here but a short time, but 
we may safely infer something respecting the char- 
acter and intelligence of a community which, even 
for a short time, could commiand and appreciate the 
ministrations of such a man as Samuel Lee. 

Here let us pause. I have narrated the circum- 
stances that led to the founding of this town, I have 
sketched an outline of its distinguishing features. I 
repeat that no such halo surrounds our early history 
as that which illumines the beginnings of the neigh- 
boring settlements. We have no claim to the dis- 
tinction which Providence and Newport boast. But 
we may justly claim praise of a different kind. We 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 65 

may claim that here was planted a town which illus- 
trated the advantages of social order ; which was 
enriched, beyond ordinary measure, with the best 
conditions of social progress ; which entered on its 
career with high and generous appreciation of social 
obligations. It had no rude beginnings. It is not 
too much to say that few rural neighborhoods in the 
mother country could boast the educational and re- 
ligious privileges which they enjoyed who followed 
the wise lead of Walley and Byfield to these untrod- 
den wilds. 

Two hundred years have passed since the work 
which I have described was done. The dream in 
which our fathers indulged, when they borrowed for 
their little settlement the name of the famous Eng- 
lish mart, has not been realized ; in the main object 
they had in view the course of events has not cor- 
responded with their expectations. The transfer of 
the town from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, which 
took place two generations later, lessened its impor- 
tance ; the hard struggle with the mother country 
bore heavily upon it ; and not even the extraordinary 
enterprise of its merchants, during the half century 
that followed, could withstand the inevitable tend- 
ency of trade which collected foreign commerce into 
a few great centres. Bristol shared the fate of so 
many famous New England seaports. The harbor 
is deserted which was once crowded with vessels 
from every clime ; the wharves are rotting where, 
within my own memory, were piled the costly prod- 
ucts of the tropics, the Mediterranean, and the Bal- 
tic. The jargon of strange races is heard no more 
in our streets ; the bustling port is transformed into 
a sum.mer watering-place. Yet I cannot doubt that 



1 66 THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 

the best work of the founders remains. The mark 
they made on the character of the town, the impulse 
they gave to its higher interests, the deep lines they 
cut upon its moral foundations, — these have not 
passed away. There is not one of us here, to-day, 
who is not better for the work they did. We trace 
their beneficent influence in the conservative char- 
acter which has always been the just boast of this 
community, in the regard for social order which has 
made it always prompt and unswerving in its sup- 
port of authority and law. We trace it in the gen- 
erous support of public institutions, of which there 
are so many striking proofs around us ; in the 
churches, where, under different forms, the God 
whom they worshipped is adored ; in the noble 
school, which, bearing the name of Byfield, shows 
that his spirit is not extinct ; and in the most recent 
ornament of our town, the beautiful Library, the gift 
of one who still survives, as an embodiment of the 
gentler and more winning virtues of the olden time, 
virtues which find small place on the page of history, 
but which form so large a part of all that gives value 
and happiness and blessing to human life. 

Much that the fathers believed we question ; much 
that they deemed essential we have put aside. But 
let us rest assured that it remains as true in our day 
as in theirs, that religion and intelligence are the 
foundations of a well-ordered and prosperous com- 
munity. The example they have given us is an ex- 
ample which we cannot afford to forget. It is the 
example of an enlightened public spirit, the lesson 
that we are members one of another, that our indi- 
vidual concerns are wrapped up in the general wel- 
fare, that we best promote our private interests when 



THE SETTLEMENT OF MOUNT HOPE. 1 6/ 

we seek the common good. This, as I read New 
England history, was the great and admirable feature 
of Puritan character ; this it was that made thera 
strong, and prosperous, and honored. Let this be 
the lesson which we carry from these services, that 
in a community like this every member must do his 
part; that no matter how small its size, no matter 
how local and limited the interests involved, we have 
no right to hold ourselves aloof from its concerns. 
The possession of la -ge means, of superior culture, 
only adds to the obhgation. This, I repeat, is the 
great lesson the fathers teach. May we so ponder 
it that when another two centuries have passed, 
when seven generations more have been laid in their 
silent graves, we ourselves may be as gratefully re- 
membered as we to-day have remembered them ! 



SIR HENRY VANE. 

AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, BROOKLYN, 

MARCH 26, 1878. 



No more appropriate service can be rendered by 
a society like that which I have the honor to ad- 
dress, than in helping to correct the erroneous esti- 
mates for which ignorance or prejudice have gained 
acceptance. An historical society discharges its 
highest function not merely in collecting and pre- 
serving the memorials of the past, but in contrib- 
uting to that progressive and impartial judgment 
which, Schiller tells us, makes the essential move- 
ment of the world's history. I shall speak to you 
of one whose position and character were alike 
unique ; of one whose fame belongs both to the Old 
and to the New World ; the most brilliant and pa- 
thetic episodes of whose career are a part of Eng- 
lish history, but whose most permanent influence 
must be traced in the institutions of our own coun- 
try ; of one, who, while strenuously identified with 
the conflicts of his time, was yet by temper and 
opinion held aloof from the parties by which those 
conflicts were carried on ; who was most misunder- 
stood by those with whom he most sincerely acted, 



S/J? HENRY VANE. 1 69 

and who has been most harshly judged by some pro- 
fessing the warmest sympathy with the cause for 
which he suffered. In a stormy age, his soul " was 
like a star, and dwelt apart." It was his signal and 
extraordinary fate to become involved in the bitter 
controversies of two hemispheres ; to be brought 
into conflict both with Puritan and with Churchman ; 
to be imprisoned by Cromwell, and to be put to 
death by Charles the Second ; and not released by 
the grave even from this strange, unquiet destiny, 
to be ridiculed alike by the believing Baxter and by 
the skeptical Hume. Such an exceptional fate can- 
not fail, at least, to provoke curiosity ; and we may 
spend an hour, perhaps, not unprofitably, in seeking 
for a fair estimate of one who, if not without faults, 
was a conspicuous representative of what was best in 
the most ideal and heroic epoch of English history, 
but whose career can perhaps be most fairly judged 
in the land where his distinctive principles have 
borne their noblest fruit. 

On the 6th of October, 1635, two great ships, 
the Defence, and the Abigail, arrived in Boston 
harbor, bringing several passengers of note, and 
among them one whose coming was reckoned an 
event of such importance, that it found full men- 
tion in that invaluable record of contemporary 
events, the '' Journal " of Governor Winthrop. He 
is there described as a young man of excellent parts, 
son and heir to Sir Henry Vane, comptroller of the 
King's household, who had been employed in the 
diplomatic service, but, having been called to the 
doctrine of the gospel, had forsaken the honors and 
preferments of the court to enjoy the ordinances of 
Christ in their purity in New England. His father, 



170 SIR HENRY VANE. 

a mere courtier/ would hardly have consented to 
his coming had not the King interfered and gained 
for the youth permission to reside for three years in 
the colony. So it was through the good ofhces of 
Charles the First that Harry Vane was allowed to 
come to Massachusetts. 

Not one of the worthy company to which he 
joined himself had come with a purer purpose, or 
had made sacrifice of more brilliant prospects. 
Like most of the leaders in the early phase of 
the great Puritan movement, he belonged to the 
best English stock. He came of the social class 
of which Sir John Eliot and Hampden were mem- 
bers, one of his ancestors having won his spurs on 
the bloody field of Poitiers. To quote his own 
words, almost the last he spoke on earth, '' he was a 
gentleman born ; had the education, temper, and 
spirit of a gentleman as well as others." But in his 
fourteenth or fifteenth year, as he- himself tells us, a 
great change came over him ; a change, the imme- 
diate causes of which are not described, but one 
so radical and permanent that neither the allure- 
ments of ambition, nor the seductions of the court, 
nor the dissipation of Oxford could subdue it. Es- 
caping from the ungenial atmosphere of Laud's pet 
university, he passed some time at Geneva, at length 
returning to England, not only a Puritan in relig- 
ion, but a pronounced enemy of despotic rule. To 
those who thought only of the preferment that he 
sacrificed, his resolution to leave his own country 
and seek a refuge in the New World doubtless 
seemed like folly, but he himself thus spoke, years 
after, of the motives which then influenced him : 

1 Gardiner calls him " a mere courtier." Sp. Mar., 2 : 145. 



SIR HENRY VANE. I7I 

" Since my early youth, through grace, I have been 
kept steadfast, desiring to walk in all good con- 
science towards God and towards man, according 
to the best light and understanding God gave me. 
For this I was willing to turn my back upon my 
estate ; expose myself to hazards in foreign parts ; 
yet nothing seemed difficult to me, so I might pre- 
serve faith and a good conscience, which I prefer 
above all things." 

After a very short residence at Boston, and before 
he had completed his twenty-fourth year, he was by 
common consent chosen Governor of the Massachu- 
setts Colony. And because, says Winthrop in his 
" Journal," " he was son and heir to the Privy Coun- 
sellor in England, the ships congratulated his elec- 
tion with a volley of great shot." It is probable that 
Vane's high social rank had much to do with his 
rapid political preferment. The Puritan colony of 
Massachusetts never shared the democratic temper 
of the more humble Separatist settlement at Plym- 
outh. It is an indication of the disposition to keep 
up something of the stately customs of the Old 
World, that when the governor attended public wor- 
ship, four sergeants, with halberds, always marched 
before him. But it would be wrong to trace Vane's 
advancement mainly to his high social rank. His 
eminent personal qualities and his earnest piety had 
most to do with it. His administration was marked 
by wisdom. The enthusiasm shown by. the ships 
in his behalf, he turned to account by making the 
masters, whom he invited to dinner, agree that in fu- 
ture all vessels bound to Boston should anchor below 
the castle till their character had been ascertained ; 
and he displayed his tact by the manner in which he 



172 S/J^ HENRY VANE, 

met the complaint of the masters that the King's 
flag was not flying from the fort. Yet one American 
historian, Hildreth, does not hesitate to represent 
Vane as acting with dissimulation on this occasion. 

But the official career that began so auspiciously 
was destined to be disturbed by the most bitter con- 
troversy that ever divided the Massachusetts Colony. 
To enter into the precise points of this famous Anti- 
nomian dispute would be out of place on this occa- 
sion, even were it possible that a modern reader 
could extract intelligent meaning from the theolog- 
ical jargon of that day. Besides, we have only the 
account of one of the contending parties, and it is 
by no means certain that the opposite side affirmed 
precisely the propositions with which they were re- 
proached. In the lofty regions of debate, where 
language loses any precise significance, misrepre- 
sentation was easy, and misunderstanding almost 
inevitable. " The name of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson," 
says Mr. Palfrey, " is dismally conspicuous in the 
early history of New England," and a recent writer, 
Dr. Dexter, applies to her the coarse epithet of " a 
first-class disturber of the peace." But a historian 
of wider survey and more profound insight, Mr. 
Bancroft, says : " The principles of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son were a natural consequence of the progress of 
the Reformation." 

She has been accused of eccentricity, but we 
must remember it was an age when the air was fra- 
grant with new opinions. That she was dissatis- 
fied with the formal, precise, and austere type of 
piety that she found so abundant, is very clear. 
With her religion was less a creed, than an inner 
experience ; and to her enthusiastic faith the Holy 



S/J? HENRY VANE. 1 73 

Ghost seemed actually to unite itself with the soul 
of the justified person. Like all who are much in 
earnest with religious truth, she lost no opportunity 
of divulging her opinions, and in imitation of a 
custom that obtained with the Boston church, of 
holding meetings for discussing the sermons of the 
ministers, she began a series of women's meetings, 
where, while bestowing unqualified approval upon 
the teachings of Cotton and Wheelwright, she 
boldly denounced the other ministers of the colony, 
so at least it was reported, " as under a covenant 
of works." Out of this came a controversy which 
nearly rent the infant commonwealth asunder. It 
is a significant fact that on the side of Mrs. Hutch- 
inson stands the whole Boston church, with five 
exceptions, while the country churches took strong 
ground against her. Doubtless there was not the 
difference then that now exists between the city and 
the country, yet the leading men of the colony were 
in the Boston church, and it should be remembered 
to the credit of Anne Hutchinson, that those who 
had the best opportunity of knowing what her teach- 
ings really were, gave her the most hearty counte- 
nance. Among her warm supporters were John 
Cotton and the young Governor. The differences 
increased more and more, until the matter was 
taken up by the General Court. Wheelwright, for 
a sermon which he had preached, was adjudged 
guilty of sedition. A protest made by Vane and a 
few members of the Court, was not received, and at 
the next election, in May, 1637, Vane and his friends 
were left out of office. The next day Vane and 
Coddington were returned as deputies from Boston. 
In this memorable controversy it seems beyond 



1/4 *S7^ HENRY VANE. 

dispute that what mainly interested Vane was not 
so much the precise opinions which Anne Flutchin- 
son maintained, as the great doctrine of religious 
liberty which he conceived to be imperilled. It was 
no ''mocking and unquiet fancy," such as Clarendon 
describes, but the early and clear apprehension of 
the great principle which guided and illumined his 
whole subsequent career. This is plainly shown in 
his paper termed " A Brief Resume," in which he 
argues against the order of Court, passed directly 
upon his removal from office, forbidding that any 
should inhabit the colony but such as were expressly 
allowed by the magistrates. With the insight of a 
far-reaching and penetrating intellect, Vane saw 
clearly that the peculiar theory on which Massachu- 
setts had been planted was one that could not be 
maintained, and that a civil state could not be built 
up upon an entire agreement of religious faith. He 
denied that either the commonwealth, or the church, 
had a right to receive or to reject members at their 
discretion. There was a higher law to which they 
were subject. 

The reputation of Vane has suffered for the reason 
that in this famous controversy he stood opposed to 
no less a person than John Winthrop. Winthrop 
led the minority of the Boston church, and was the 
recognized head of the country party. The policy 
represented by Winthrop for the time prevailed. 
Mrs. Hutchinson and her principal supporters were 
exiled from the colony ; and the storm was succeeded 
by external calm. By the majority of writers Win- 
throp has been applauded as a wise m.agistrate and 
a consummate statesman, as the one who, more than 
any other, raised the struggling commonwealth ; 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 75 

while Vane has been condemned as an inexperienced 
and rash enthusiast, perilling the very foundations 
of civil order by his inconsiderate zeal for wild and 
impracticable theories. To judge either of these 
two men fairly we need to take into account all the 
considerations which influenced them ; and especially 
the very different relation in which they stood to the 
memorable enterprise in which the Massachusetts 
colony was then engaged. 

It is with hesitation that I venture to offer any 
observations that may seem, in the least, to conflict 
with the traditional and unqualified veneration that 
is felt for the first Governor of Massachusetts. If in 
public life, courage, firmness, judgment, unblemished 
integrity and honor, disinterested zeal for the public 
good, deserve the approbation of posterity, this ven- 
eration, which in Massachusetts has almost amounted 
to religious faith, has not been unworthily bestowed. 
Among all the leaders of memorable enterprises that 
history has celebrated, we may search in vain for a 
figure more venerable and imposing. Nor has the 
recent unveiling of his personal character, in the 
publication of his private letters and religious med- 
itations, done anything to lessen this respect. In 
his most secret experiences, in his hopes and fears, 
in his joys and sorrows, he still stands before us 
grave, majestic, spotless as the marble that repre- 
sents him in the chapel at Mount Auburn, type of a 
Puritan without fear and without reproach. 

Yet, while in this controversy I have no disposi- 
tion to withhold from Winthrop the praise due to a 
wise, a prudent, a temperate magistrate, I cannot 
withhold from Vane praise for different, and I must 
think, higher qualities. To comprehend clearly their 



176 SIR HENRY VANE. 

relative positions we must remember that there were 
in Massachusetts, at this time, two wholly different 
parties, parties aiming at different objects and ani- 
mated by a different spirit. One of these parties, 
made up of the original settlers, the members of the 
colonial corporation, the men who devised and exe- 
cuted the bold transfer of the Charter by which a sim- 
ple trading company in England became transformed 
in America into a body politic, were, as was very nat- 
ural, mainly intent on the preservation of their char- 
tered rights. With them the first aim was to build 
up and strengthen the infant commonwealth. Their 
greatest dread was of discord and division. "The 
cracks and flaws in the new building of the Reform- 
ation," said the soul-ravishing Thomas Shepard, 
"portend a fall." Unlimited religious freedom they 
viewed with especial dread as fatal to that unique 
civil order which they had cemented with so much 
sacrifice, and so many prayers. Into their plan had 
entered no purpose of establishing a universal toler- 
ation ; what they coveted as the ideal of social life 
was a compact and solid commonwealth, founded in 
the fear of God, and making the protection of pure 
religion its foremost obligation. In this wise the civil 
magistrate had no more sacred duty than to protect 
the church, and what they understood by church was 
not a confused medley of the devout and the profane, 
but the earnest supporters of a definite creed. Yet 
mixed up with this were more worldly interests. Be- 
fore they became a body politic, they were a trading 
corporation. The advancement of their private ends 
was ever a leading aim. In the gradual growth of 
the great trading and land company into a common- 
wealth, a jealous regard for their legal rights and 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 7/ 

private interests was strangely combined with zeal 
for higher concerns. 

But, beside this party thus embodying the com- 
bined religious and mercantile spirit of the original 
company, there existed another, made up of new 
comers, and animated by a different spirit, a party 
not so much concerned for the success of the Mas- 
sachusetts company, as for the interests of spiritual 
freedom ; thinking less of strengthening and build- 
ing up the particular enterprise in which the first 
settlers were engaged, than of following out, in the 
joy of an unchecked liberty, that pursuit of eternal 
and ideal truth, which in the Old World had been de- 
nied them. These had been allured to the New 
World by the vision of a land where the principles 
of the Reformation would be allowed their logical 
development. Their ideal was not of a sober, well- 
regulated, thrifty colony, where controversy should 
cease, and truth should flourish, but of a community 
opening its hospitable doors to all opinions, where 
those professing error should not be denied cohabi- 
tation, where even Ishmael should dwell in the pres- 
ence of his brethren. 

The first of these parties naturally looked to Win- 
throp ; the acknowledged leader of the second was 
young Harry Vane. By temperament, by education, 
by position, Winthrop was pledged to the party of 
order ; by intellectual breadth, by spiritual insight, 
and also by position Vane was as much pledged to the 
liberal side. Winthrop was an English country gen- 
tleman, of middle life, of moderate opinions, of hand- 
some property, who gave up his fair Suffolk home, 
transported himself and his family to these shores, 
made this his abiding place, fixed all his worldly 



178 SIR HENRY VANE. 

interests here. It was not only natural, it was per- 
fectly right and proper, that a jealous care for the 
success of the enterprise, for which he had sacrificed 
so much, should have supplied a large motive to his 
action. With the savages on one side, with constant 
dread of interference from the mother country on 
the other, but firmly resolved to persevere at any 
cost in the experiment which they had undertaken, 
it was not strange that Winthrop, and men situated 
like Winthrop, should have felt and acted as they 
did. 

Vane, on the other hand, was a young man, with 
no family, with no worldly concerns at stake, at best 
but a sojourner in the community which so gener- 
ously conferred upon him its highest honors. To 
him Massachusetts was a means, not an end. He 
was in no way connected with the original company ; 
in the enterprise as a commercial speculation he had 
no share. What had brought him to the New World 
was the single desire to preserve faith and a good 
conscience. This seemed to him the sum of all social 
and political experiments. For this he had been 
willing to renounce preferment and wealth. He 
came in search of an ideal, of such an ideal as then 
existed only in his own fervid imagination. He had 
heard the complaints of those who had suffered for 
conscience' sake ; he dreamed of a land where con- 
science should not be molested under pretense of 
protecting the civil power ; his confident and eager 
faith picturing in New England a spring of liberty 
pure and perennial as that fount of immortal youth 
which the Spanish explorers had sought amid the 
everglades of Florida. 

Has not the time come to render full justice to both 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 79 

these men ? We may applaud Winthrop as an honest, 
a capable, a judicious magistrate, and still not re- 
proach Vane as a mischief-maker and fanatic. To 
Winthrop may belong the more grateful mention in 
the annals of Massachusetts, but on the page of 
that more inspiring story that concerns itself not 
with corporate interests, the success of trading com- 
panies, and the temporary expedients of colonial 
enterprise, but with the immutable principles of 
man's spiritual nature, and the long warfare waged 
by the sons of light against the evil powers that have 
stood in the way of ideal truth, that page in whose 
deathless record live the unsceptered monarchs "who 
still rule our spirits from their urns," shall not some 
place be assigned to Harry Vane ? 

Thoroughly disheartened by the turn that things 
were taking in Massachusetts, and doubtless with 
the natural impatience of a young and ardent mind, 
at finding its dreams so rudely dissipated. Vane re- 
turned to England in August, 1637. Baxter after- 
wards took pains to repeat the slander, that he stole 
away by night, but Winthrop's trustworthy record 
tells us that he was honorably dismissed, a great 
concourse of his friends attending him to the ves- 
sel, and the guns of the castle giving a parting sa- 
lute. The salute was by Winthrop's order, who was 
too great and magnanimous a man to allow pubUc 
differences to interfere with private courtesy. As 
Vane took his last look at the thatched roof and 
humble meeting-house that long nestled among the 
three hills of the Puritan town, his spirit doubtless 
would have been comforted could the veil that hid 
the future be drawn aside, and could he have seen 
the village grown to a great city, a city destined to 



l80 SIR HENRY VANE. 

be renowned beyond all others for tolerance of opin- 
ion, and for her eagerness in learning or in telling 
some new thing. 

And one can but muse on what might have been 
the effect on the later history of Massachusetts had 
she persisted in this early policy of banishing to 
Rhode Island all Her bright and enterprising wits. 
She would doubtless have secured a thrifty and well 
ordered social life ; she might have developed her 
material resources ; she might have subdued her 
sterile soil ; might have coined her ice and granite 
into gold ; still I can but fancy she would have lacked 
some of the things that have given her renown : 
she might have produced historians like Cotton 
Mather, and poets like Michael Wigglesworth, but 
she would hardly have enriched our literature with 
Bancroft and Motley and Lowell, she would hardly 
have welcomed the wide humanity of Channing, and 
hardly have lent an ear to the subtle wisdom of Em- 
erson. 

Well for her that she did not cast away the wine 
of Puritanism simply to swallow the dregs ! 

But Vane's connection with this country was not 
destined to be terminated by his return to England. 
When he first became acquainted with Roger Wil- 
liams we are not informed, but two days after he 
landed, the sentence of banishment was pronounced 
against Williams, and Vane must very early have 
had his attention drawn to one who, like himself, 
chose rather to taste the bitterness of death than act 
with a doubting conscience. They must very soon 
have been brought together, for years after, Roger 
Williams, in writing of the settlement of the beau- 
tiful island which had attracted the notice of the 



SIR HENRY VANE. l8l 

bold Florentine navigator nearly a century before 
the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth, says : " It 
was not price nor money that could have purchased 
the island. Rhode Island was obtained by love, by 
the love and favor which that honorable gentleman. 
Sir Henry Vane, and myself had with the great 
sachem Miantinomo." And when, in consequence 
of the persistent hostility of Massachusetts, the set- 
tlements on the Narragansett were almost on the 
verge of being blotted from the map, it was mainly 
through the powerful interference of Vane that they 
succeeded in obtaining a '' free and absolute char- 
ter of civil government." This charter was wholly 
unique in colonial history. All former charters had 
been granted by favor of the crown, or under charters 
thus granted, and had aimed at establishing exclu- 
sive companies, in most cases with limited provis- 
ion for civic liberty. But the Long Parliament was 
now in the ascendant, and the control over colonies 
formerly vested in the crown was entrusted to a 
committee of Parliament, at the head of which was 
placed the Earl of Warwick. Under authority of 
this body, the "well affected and industrious inhab- 
itants " along the Naragansett were granted full pow- 
ers and authority to govern themselves. " Thus," 
says Mr. Bancroft, "to the Long Parliament, and 
especially to Sir Henry Vane, Rhode Island owes its 
existence as a political State." Vane was naturally 
zealous to secure legal recognition for a community 
whose polity was framed in precise accordance with 
his own theory of religious liberty. 

Nor was this the only time that Rhode Island 
was indebted to the same powerful intercession. 
When, in 165 1, Coddington had succeeded in secur- 



1 82 S/J^ HENRY VANE. 

ing from the Council of State a commission for 
governing the islands of Rhode Island and Canon- 
icut for life, a dismemberment of the infant com- 
monwealth that must inevitably have resulted in 
transferring the remaining portion of her soil to the 
adjacent colonies, and when Williams was sent to 
England to procure a revocation of this extraordi- 
nary grant, it was wholly through the vigorous inter- 
position of Vane that his mission was accomplished. 
Writing from Bellan, Vane's seat in Lincolnshire, 
under date of April i, 1653, to his "Dear and loving 
friends and neighbors of Providence and Warwick," 
Williams says, " Under God the sheet anchor of our 
ship is Sir Harry." His unflagging interest in the 
little colony prompted him soon after to write a 
letter in which he besought the settlers to compose 
some differences then troubling them. The answer 
of the colony to this letter, for dignity and feeling, 
will not suffer by comparison with any state paper 
of any age or country. 

" From the first beginning of the Providence colony," 
thus ran the address, " you have been a noble and 
true friend to an outcast and despised people. We have 
ever reaped the sweet fruits of your constant loving kind- 
ness and favor. We have long drunk of the cup of as 
great liberties as any people that we can hear of under 
the whole heaven. When we are gone, our posterity and 
children, after us, shall read, in our town records, your 
loving kindness to us, and our real endeavors after peace 
and righteousness." 

Vane's career in Massachusetts may have seemed 
to himself, as doubtless it seemed to others, a mor- 
tifying failure, but he left a deep mark on the insti- 
tutions of the New World. Systems perish, but 



S/J^ HENRY VANE. 1 83 

ideas are indestructible. The curious theocratic 
state, built up with so much pains by Winthrop 
and his connections, has passed away. The princi- 
ple of entire religious liberty, which, through the 
efforts of Vane, received for the first time in Chris- 
tendom a recognition in Rhode Island, has con- 
tinued to grow till the whole land sits under the 
shadow of it. 

During Vane's stay in Massachusetts events had 
been rapidly ripening. Ten months before he left, 
the judgment respecting ship-money had been re- 
covered against John Hampden, and when he landed, 
England was ringing with the uproar caused by 
Laud's attempt to force his liturgy upon the Scotch. 
In April, 1640, the Short Parliament was called, 
in which Vane for the first time took his seat. 
Through the influence of his father, still an influ- 
ential adviser of the King, he was made first treas- 
urer of the navy, and soon after, with the hope, ap- 
parently of attaching him to the court, received the 
honor of knighthood. In November, 1640, the 
Long Parliament assembled, and from this time the 
career of Vane becomes identified with the most 
stirring period of English history. To know, that 
is to know with what address and eloquence he ad- 
vocated the great principles of civil liberty, the 
maintenance of which made the Long Parliament 
the most memorable deliberative body that met ; to 
know with what skill and success he managed the 
most difficult negotiations with the Scotch ; with 
what ability he wielded the naval power of Eng- 
land ; with what persistent and unshaken courage 
he defended the rights of Parliament against what 
he regarded as the dangerous encroachments of mil- 



1 84 SIR HENRY VANE. 

itary power. Though strongly opposed to the King, 
he had never favored the domination of the army, 
and when, by the act of Colonel Pride, the authority 
of Parliament had been virtually subverted, disdain- 
ing to share a triumph purchased by means which 
he could not sanction, he retired to private life. 
The final proceedings, resulting in the execution of 
the King, he strongly disapproved. 

The most successful part of Vane's career was his 
superb administration of the navy during the Com- 
monwealth. It was here that his genius for prac- 
tical affairs was as conspicuously displayed, as his 
eloquence and address had been proved in a different 
sphere. When the war with the Provinces began 
the Dutch were undisputed lords of the seas. Before 
it closed, the energy of Vane and the valor of Blake 
had raised England to the first rank of naval powers. 
Between the two men there existed a profound 
agreement in political sentiment, and long as a vessel 
floats to bear aloft the red banner of St George, the 
names of Harry Vane and of Robert Blake will be 
mentioned in the same breath. But I pass from a 
familiar story, and from passages in his history 
which the least generous of his critics have been 
forced to mention with applause, to consider his re- 
lations with Cromwell, relations which have affected 
more than anything else his reputation with poster- 
ity. There can be no doubt that this most brilUant 
statesmen of the Commonwealth is better known to 
the mass of readers by Cromwell's petulant exclama- 
tion when he dissolved the Long Parliament, "the 
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane," than he is 
by any act in his long career. Without pausing to 
inquire what Cromwell meant, if indeed what he 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 85 

meant was clear to his own mind, without asking 
which was right in the contest which was thus vio- 
lently concluded, men, impressed and captivated by 
the colossal force of Cromwell's character, have 
hastily inferred that Vane was an impracticable vis- 
ionary, whose speculations no man could understand, 
and whose schemes no age could reduce to practice. 
That Vane should have been misjudged by a man 
like Clarendon, who hated with all the energy of a 
powerful but narrow mind the political theories 
which Vane so vigorously supported ; that he should 
have been misrepresented by Baxter, who disliked 
his theological opinions ; that he should have been 
held in susjDicion by the whole band of prosaic, com- 
monplace fanatics, who prefer forms to essence and 
words to things, was to be expected ; but he has been 
most depreciated by some whose only ground of 
dislike was his opposition to Cromwell. 

In the beginning of the struggle Cromwell and 
Vane had stood side by side. They were not only 
in hearty agreement in political opinion, but they 
both, in opposition to Presbyterian as well as Church- 
man, advocated an unlimited toleration in religion. 
The great measures of the Long Parliament which 
had laid the foundations of Cromwell's military suc- 
cess, the new model and the self-denying ordinances, 
were measures to which Vane had given an enthusi- 
astic support. That strange force, which, as Macau- 
lay says, " from the time when it was remodelled to 
the time when it was disbanded never found an 
enemy who could stand its onset," was in part Vane's 
creation. After the death of the King, Vane and 
Cromwell were cordially united in establishing the 
Commonwealth. No person familiar with public sen- 



1 86 SIR HENRY VANE. 

timent supposed that anything like a majority of the 
Enghsh people were favorable to this form of gov- 
ernment, but it was hoped by the leaders that a wise 
and successful administration of affairs would in 
time bring many to its support who at first received 
it with dislike. 

It was not until the refusal of Fairfax to march 
against the Scotch left Cromwell in supreme com- 
mand of the army, that Vane seems to have felt 
any suspicions of his intentions. The crowning 
mercy of Worcester laid everything at the victorious 
general's feet. The issue lay between the Parhament 
and the army. Since the establishment of the Com- 
monwealth the question, How a new Parliament 
should be convened, had been earnestly debated. It 
was recognized by all that the remnant left of the 
Long Parliament no longer possessed a national 
character ; but respecting the remedy, opinions were 
divided. But the Rump and the army were aware 
that a free election would probably result in a roy- 
alist Parliament, and both shrunk from an appeal to 
the popular voice. The remedy at last proposed by 
Vane was to fill the vacant seats, allowing the old 
members to hold over ; the remedy advocated by 
Cromwell was to call a new Parliament, to be freely 
elected, but with such constitutional securities as 
would effectually guard against a royalist reaction. 

It is hardly necessary for my present purpose to 
discuss the merits of this controversy. *' Now that 
the King is dead and his son defeated," Cromwell 
said to the Parliament, " it is time to come to a set- 
tlement" But the bill for dissolving Parliament 
was only passed, after bitter opposition, by a majority 
of two ; and by a compromise that permitted the 



SIJ? HENRY VANE. 1 87 

House to sit for three years longer. To add to the 
discontent charges of corruption were freely brought 
against some members. Tlie only remedy, in the 
opinion of the army, was a new House; but this step 
the House was determined to avert. Hardly had 
the Dutch war been declared when the army peti- 
tioned for an explicit declaration that the House 
would bring its proceedings to a close. This forced 
the House to discuss the question, but only brought 
out the resolve of the members to continue as part 
of the new ParHament without reelection. A con- 
ference took place between the leaders of the Com- 
mons and the officers of the House. The attempt 
of Vane to hurry the bill through the House resulted 
in Cromwell's forcible dissolution of the Rump Par- 
liament. 

With regard to this difference between Vane and 
Cromwell, as with the difference between Vane and 
Winthrop, we are now in a position to judge both 
men fairly. There is no doubt that Vane honestly 
suspected Cromwell of aiming at supreme power, 
and there need be no doubt that Cromwell honestly 
thought that Vane was playing him a trick. But 
both were sincerely bent on realizing the same 
great object ; both were aiming at a free state, gov- 
erned by its elected representatives, and providing 
sufficient guarantees for liberty of thought and 
speech. It is not difficult to see how two men, so 
unlike in temper and habits as Vane and Cromwell, 
should fail to understand each other. We have had 
one illustration, in our own country, in the quarrel 
between General Grant and the late Senator Sum- 
ner, of the way in which two thoroughly honest 
men, both aiming at the same results, may come to 



IiS6 SIJ? HENRY VANE. 

suspect each other's motives. But nothing would 
be more unsafe than to base one's estimate of the 
character or services of such men upon the opin- 
ions which they thus mutually entertained. 

Because Cromwell was a man of action, always 
aiming at practical results, it has been hastily con- 
cluded that Vane was a mere theorist, and that, in 
pursuit of an unattainable ideal, he was ready to 
sacrifice a positive good. Nothing can do his char- 
acter as a statesman a greater wrong. Vane was 
not a visionary politician seeking to brush away the 
old institutions of his country, and set up new ones, 
with no root whatever in the soil. It would be 
difficult to prove, either from his speeches or writ- 
ings, that he was ever a theoretical republican, 
intent on establishing at all hazards a particular 
political form. In a " Treatise on Government," 
written shortly before his death, he says : " It is not 
so much the form of the administration as the thing 
administered, wherein the good or evil of govern- 
ment doth consist." The great objects which he kept 
steadily in view, were a reform of representatives, 
freedom of thought, and perfect toleration in relig- 
ion. If he supported a republic, it was because he 
saw that these could not be secured under a mon- 
archy. 

But it is an error to infer that he was animated 
by any spirit of hostility to the ancient institutions 
of England. 

" However I have been misunderstood and misjudged," 
he says of himself, " I can truly affirm, that in the whole 
series of my actions, that which I have had in my eye, 
hath been to preserve the ancient well-constituted gov- 
ernment of England on its own basis and primitive right- 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 89 

eous foundations, most learnedly stated by Fortescue in 
his book, made in praise of the English laws, and I did 
account it the most likely means for the effecting of this 
to preserve it at least in its root, whatever changes and 
alterations it might be exposed to in its branches, through 
the blusterous and stormy times that have passed over us." 

These are surely not the words of a v^ild political 
enthusiast ! 

Yet Vane was opposed to Cromwel', and hence 
the eulogists of the one have felt it necessary to de- 
fame the other. No one has gone farther in this 
direction than Carlyle : — 

*'A man of endless virtues," he sneeringly says of 
Vane, " and of endless intellect, but you must not very 
specially ask How and When 1 Vane was the friend of 
Milton ; that is almost the only answer that can be given 
— a man, one rather finds, of light fibre, — grant all man- 
ner of purity and elevation, subtle high discourse, much 
intellectual and practical dexterity, an amiable, devoutly 
zealous, very pretty man, but not a royal man, — on the 
whole, rather a thin man, whose tendency is towards the 
abstract, and whose hold of the concrete is by no means 
that of a giant." 

A passage such as this may well suggest a doubt 
whether the biographer of Frederic the Great was, 
after all, the man to trace the stages of a struggle 
into which conscience" so powerfully entered, whether 
a vision so purblind by the worship of mere force 
could appreciate the finer qualities of the moral 
hero ! 

Surely another answer might be given. Did they 
think Vane a man of rather light fibre who saw 
him stand in the forefront of the great debates that 
ended in sending Strafford to the block, those de- 



1 90 SIR HENRY VANE. 

bates, during which, said Ludlow, who knew him 
well, "he soon made appear how capable he was 
of managing great affairs, possessing in the high- 
est perfection a quick and ready apprehension, a 
strong and tenacious memory, a profound and pene- 
trating judgment, a just and noble eloquence." 

Did they think him simply a pretty man, who 
selected him to conduct the difficult negotiations 
with the Scotch, speaking of which Lord Clarendon, 
his life-long and bitter enemy, declares, that having 
mentioned Sir Harry Vane as one of the commis- 
sioners, the others need not be named, since he 
was all in any business in which others were joined 
with him ? " A man," he adds, " of extraordinary 
parts and great understanding, of whose ability 
there need no more be said than that he was chosen 
to cover and deceive a whole nation who excel in 
craft and cunning." 

Or did they deem him a mere dreamer of ab- 
stractions, with no hold on the concrete, who in the 
hour of distress and danger gave him England's 
right hand to wield, and who recognized the proof 
of his rare administrative genius in the unparalleled 
exertions that were crowned with the most brilUant 
naval victory England had gained since the Great 
Armada .? Or lastly, did Milton share this estimate 
of Vane when he wrote the admiring lines : — 

" Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, 

Than whom a better senator ne'er held 

The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repell'd 
The fierce Epirot and the African bold. 
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 

The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd, 

Then to advise how war may, best upheld, 
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 



SIR HENRY VANE. I9I 

In all her equipage : besides to know 
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 
What severs each, thou hast learn'd, which few have done : 
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe : 
Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans 
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 

Mr. Masson, in the recently published volumes 
of his " Life of Milton," calls attention to the fact 
that in the '' Defensio Secunda," which was printed 
in 1654, two years after this sonnet was written, 
while elaborate panegyrics of Bradshaw and Fairfax 
and other leading men of the Commonwealth are 
introduced, no mention whatever is made of Vane. 
But while this pamphlet proves beyond all doubt 
that Milton indorsed heartily the policy that Crom- 
well had adopted, since he expresses his approval 
not only of the dissolution of the Rump and the 
Interim Dictatorship, but also of the Protectorate 
after the failure of the Barebones Parliament, yet 
it has nothing to indicate that his exalted estimate 
of Vane's abilities had been in the least modified. 
In this very Defense he recommends a dissolution 
of the connection of Church and State, and a return 
to absolute voluntaryism in religion, — the precise 
measures with which Vane had all along been iden- 
tified. In a production meant to recommend to the 
Protector a particular policy, Milton could hardly 
have praised Cromwell's most pronounced oppo- 
nent. 

But we need no better proof of the estimate in 
which Vane was held by those who had the best 
means of taking his true measure than is furnished 
in the events which followed the Restoration. When 
Charles 11. returned, hailed with a frenzy of long- 
suppressed loyalty, Vane left his seat in Lincolnshire, 



192 SIR HENRY VANE. 

and came up to London. He was unconscious, he 
said, of having done anything for which he could 
not cheerfully give account. He had taken no share 
in the trial and death of Charles I. The new king 
had promised a generous indemnity for political 
offenses. Nevertheless, in July, 1660, Vane was 
arrested and flung into the Tower ; and to flatter a 
sovereign, himself incapable either of love or hate, 
— who at all times assumed a cynical disbelief in 
human virtue as simply a trick by which hypocrites 
impose on fools, — he was arraigned for high trea- 
son in 1662. Denied the assistance of counsel, and 
even refused a copy of the indictment to which he 
was called to plead, alone, but unterrified, the pris- 
oner made a masterly defense, speaking, as he de- 
clared to his judges, " not for his own sake only, but 
for theirs and for posterity." 

The condemnation of Vane was a double outrage : 
first, on public decency, as it was a violation of the 
King's express promise of indemnity ; and, second, 
on public justice, as it was directly in the face of a 
wholesome principle of English law, having the force 
of a statute since the time of Henry VH., which 
exempted from the penalties of treason all subjects 
obeying a de facto sovereign. But the most conclu- 
sive defense was idle, for the trial was a farce. Back 
of judges and jury a malignant influence was pushing 
on the foregone conclusion. In a note which has 
been preserved, addressed by Charles to Clarendon, 
he says of Vane, " Certainly he is too dangerous a 
man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of 
the way." Idler and voluptuary as he was, Charles 
II. was a shrewd judge of men. Holding them all 
in a kind of assumed contempt, he hereby divined 



SIR HENRY VANE. I.93 

their differences of character. And when Charles 
thus wrote of a man that he " was too danger- 
ous to let live," it surely does not seem likely that 
he regarded him simply as a " pretty man," as a 
visionary theorist, who had no hold on the con- 
crete. 

The end was not long in coming. On Wednes- 
day, the nth of June, Vane stood at the bar to re- 
ceive his sentence, and on the Saturday following a 
vast concourse crowded every window and house-top 
over against the Tower to see him pass to execution. 
As the gloomy portals opened, and while the great 
multitude cried out, " The Lord go with you ! " a 
stately figure, dressed in black, with scarlet waist- 
coat, bowed constant acknowledgments as the sled 
was slowly drawn to the slight eminence just out- 
side the walls, on which stood the scaffold and the 
block. 

There are few spots on earth round which such 
sad memories cluster. On that same eminence, 
twenty years before, with spirit as undaunted, put- 
ting off his doublet as cheerfully, he said, as ever he 
had done at night, had stood the great Earl of Straf- 
ford. Thither, a few years after Strafford, victim of 
a bigotry as cruel and unreasonable as that of which 
himself had been accused, had come Archbishop 
Laud. On the same blood-stained hillock had stood, 
in the preceding century, Guilford Dudley, the hus- 
band of Jane Grey, his gentle wife watching from a 
window as he walked along, and waiting to see his 
headless trunk brought back ; and the Protector Som- 
erset, whose high personal courage could not atone 
for political faults, but whose errors were forgotten 
in his tragical end ; and the young Earl of Surrey, 



194 -S-/^ HENRY VANE. 

whose enduring monument was the enriching of Eng- 
lish poetry with blank verse ; and Thomas Cromwell, 
perhaps the most perplexing figure in the whole line 
of English statesmen, who blended the maxims of 
Italy with the policy of Henry, and struck the 
death-blow to Papal supremacy in the confiscation 
of the monasteries. 

But before all these, in merit as in time, there 
had come another sufferer, the first conspicuous 
victim of the attempt to stretch the royal preroga- 
tive, as Vane was the last. Between Sir Thomas 
More and Sir Harry Vane there may seem in com- 
mon at first sight simply the mode of death : one 
laying his head on the block, as he did, out of su- 
preme devotion to the Church of Rome, delighting 
in her rites and doctrines ; the other, in his zeal for 
spiritual liberty, suspected of discarding all out- 
ward rites and forms. And yet, in spirit they were 
not unlike, — More the purest victim of the great 
religious, and Vane the purest victim of the great 
civil, revolution. As More found his eulogist in 
Erasmus, so Vane found his in Milton. In different 
ways both laid down their lives out of devotion to 
ideal truth ; both confessing the supreme obliga- 
tion of conscience, both scorning expediency as a 
rule of political conduct, both bowing before a law 
higher than any human ordinance. And still fur- 
ther might the parallel be traced between the scholar 
who, in his " Utopia," fondly depicted an ideal 
state, where the end of legislation should be to se- 
cure the good of the whole, — where social injustice, 
political tyranny, and religious intolerance should 
alike cease ; where all should be taught to read and 
write ; and where both priest and magistrate should 



SIR HENRY VANE. 1 95 

be chosen by the people, — and the statesman whose 
life was devoted to the realization of this ideal in a 
free, a self-governed, a prosperous commonwealth ; 
who, in opposition to religious intolerance both in 
the New and in the Old World, and in defiance of a 
popular sentiment which decried him as a visionary 
and a fanatic, unflinchingly maintained the doctrine 
that religious opinion should under no circumstances 
be restrained by the civil power. 

And now, while we watch Vane standing on the 
scaffold, his hands resting on the rails, surveying 
with a serious but composed countenance the surg- 
ing multitude before him and around him ; essaying 
to speak, but rudely interrupted by the trumpeters, 
who were commanded to crowd about him and blow 
in his face ; the very mob murmuring their discon- 
tent as the sheriff tore from his hand the paper 
which he began to read, but himself maintaining a 
dignified composure, so that even a Royalist spec- 
tator declared " that he died like a prince ; " then 
kneeling in prayer, and blessing God, who had 
counted him worthy to suffer in this way, his moral 
courage completely triumphing over the native tim- 
orousness of his character, — watching Vane, I say, 
in this supreme moment of his fate, what verdict 
shall we pass upon him ? 

I refer not to his personal traits, to his stainless 
integrity, his sincerity of purpose, the purity of his 
private life, the unaffected piety which in the darkest 
crisis of his career was his unfailing comfort and 
support, but what shall we say of him as a public 
man ? 

Was he, in the words of Anthony Wood, "the 
Proteus of the times, a mere hotch-potch of religions, 



196 SIR HENRY VANE. 

chief ringleader of all the frantic sectarians" ? — a 
man whose writings, the historian Hume declares, 
" are absolutely unintelligible, with no traces of elo- 
quence, or even of common sense " ? Such, surely, 
is not the judgment of those who have studied his 
various productions, writings pervaded throughout 
by a depth of spiritual insight, a simplicity and no- 
bleness of diction, which puts them on a level with 
the best theological hterature of the seventeenth 
century. Even the charge which Clarendon brings 
against him of being a man '* above ordinances," 
when translated into modern phrase, means simply 
that Vane regarded religious forms as means, not 
ends. Holding with the apostle that the gospel 
meant neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, but 
a new creature, he was equally removed from the 
extreme which elevated the form above the sub- 
stance, and the extreme which elevated the letter 
above the spirit. He was equally aloof from the 
bigotry of the Churchman and the bigotry of the 
Puritan. It is not surprising that a hard-headed 
Scotchman like Burnet should have been puzzled to 
know what his true opinions were. 

Burnet says that Vane was what was called a 
Seeker ; that he waited for new and clearer reve- 
lations ; and that he leaned to Origen's notion of a 
universal salvation. But what more than anything 
else gave rise to the opinion that his intellect was 
clouded and unsettled was his confident expectation 
of the speedy return of Christ. The scaffold and 
the axe mattered little to one who could declare 
with his latest breath that in the cloud and dark- 
ness of that hour he only saw more clearly the 
New Jerusalem. 



S/J? HENRY VANE. 1 97 

Was Vane a statesman who accomplished noth- 
ing, — whose life was spent in idly dreaming of an 
unattainable ideal ? So it might have seemed to 
those who saw him on the scaffold ; who bitterly re- 
flected how in the whirlwind of returning loyalty 
the wholesome reforms which he had advocated were 
blown aside. True, that English commonwealth, 
which to his mind was the very perfection of a body 
politic, had but a short-lived existence ; but shall 
we say that he lived to no purpose when the iden- 
tical measures which he advocated have, in the 
course of two hundred years, steadily wrought them- 
selves into the English constitution ; when his fun- 
damental maxim, that the end of all government is 
the welfare of the governed, is to-day the accepted 
principle of English politics ; when the reform of 
representation which he pressed has been carried 
out in a series of memorable enactments ; when 
the separation of church and state, for which he 
contended, is at this moment the next problem con- 
fronting English statesmen ? 

Shall we say that he lived to no purpose when 
we remember that, in little more than a century 
after his blood was shed, his identical plan of a fun- 
damental constitution, to be drawn up by a general 
convention of discerning men, chosen for that pur- 
pose by the whole people, was carried into effect 
by the body over which George Washington pre- 
sided, which framed the Constitution of the United 
States ? We who have demonstrated that his vision 
of a repubhc where the people are recognized as 
the sole source of power need not be scouted as 
an idle dream ; clothing it in the Western world with 
an amplitude and majesty which his wildest imagi- 



198 SIR HENRY VANE. 

nation never pictured ; proving in the throes of an 
unexampled civil strife that a government resting 
on popular consent is incomparably the strongest 
that can exist, able to bear a shock that would have 
swept away like chaff the proudest monarchies, — 
we who know and have experienced all this, shall 
we afhrm that Vane accomplished nothing by his 
unflinching advocacy of principles for which his own 
age was not ripe ? Then, indeed, must every will- 
ing sacrifice of hero or martyr be condemned as a 
reckless and useless throwing away of life ! 

I grant that Vane was an enthusiast ; but society 
can ill spare its enthusiasts even from the arena 
of political life. The great struggle between King 
and Parliament in the seventeenth century was fruit- 
ful in spirits bravely pitched : in the front rank of 
either side were men of consummate parts ; yet 
two stand out from all the rest, Falkland and Vane. 
They were on opposite sides. They were unlike in 
character : one was learned and accomplished, 
delighting to make his house a centre for wise and 
witty men ; the other, devout and spiritual, gather- 
ing about him such as loved to commune with the 
invisible powers. Yet both were worshippers of the 
ideal ; both yearned passionately for something 
broader and nobler than they found about them. 
Each gave his life for a lost cause : one on the field 
of Newbury, the other on Tower Hill. But now that 
the noise of the conflict has passed, men are com- 
ing to see that what these two were in search of 
was the best result of the struggle. 



REVIEWS. 



RELIGION IN America; 

1 776-1876. 

The Revolution which a century ago severed the 
connection between Great Britain and her colonies 
issued so directly from political disputes that its 
religious aspects have been obscured ; yet no fact 
lies plainer on the page of colonial history than the 
intimate alliance of religious and political ideas, — 
a fact which the elder Adams emphasized when he 
cautioned the Abbe Mably not to undertake the his- 
tory of the War of Independence without first mas- 
tering the church system of New England. And it 
would form a singular exception to the ordinary laws 
of historical development if that which is so evident 
in the causes of the Revolution could not be traced 
in its results. Those results supplied new ecclesi- 
astical as well as new political conditions, and flow- 
ered, at the same time, in the novel experiments of 
a self-governed state and of a self-directing and self- 
supporting church. Nor should the formal separa- 
tion of these two experiments betray us into the 
error of supposing that they are essentially distinct. 
They have been carried on together, by the same 
people, and during the same period, and throughout 
all this period have had a connection more close 
and real than will be conceded by such as are ac- 

1 Published in the North American Review, January, 1876. 



202 RELIGION IN AMERICA, 

customed to look only at the superficial causes of 
political and social progress. There can be no 
doubt that whatever circumstances tend to affect 
the one must ultimately affect the other also, and- 
that any extensive modification of the religious sen- 
timent would ultimately react upon political opinion. 
An acute critic of American society, not a religious 
philosopher but a political economist, has found in 
our experience a signal illustration of the principle 
** that there must be harmony between the political 
and religious schemes that are suited to a people ; '* 
and a later writer, the least inclined of any historian 
of civilization to lay stress on the spiritual forces 
that shape society, has indorsed Chevalier's maxim, 
in a striking passage which traces the influence ex- 
erted on political opinion by religious creeds. The 
religion of a people is, in a profound sense, a part of 
its history, and results in phenomena, to which the 
mere pohtical student cannot afford to shut his eyes. 
The hundred years which we are passing in review 
have been marked by sweeping ecclesiastical and 
theological convulsions. Hardly had the last royal 
regiment left our shores when the sky grew black 
with signs of a more far-reaching revolution, and for 
a time altar and throne went down together. Since 
that return of chaos and old night, the vexed prob- 
lem which Hildebrand and the Hohenstauffens left 
unsolved has harassed every European state. In 
France, in Italy, and in Germany the struggle has 
presented its most brilliant phases. In the South 
the Pope has been stripped of every vestige of a polit- 
ical dominion which long antedated that of the proud- 
est royal dynasty ; while in the North a new Prot- 
estant empire has been called into existence, which 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 203 

boldly remits to antiquaries the traditional relations 
between Germany and the Holy See. England, if 
less powerfully convulsed, has by no means escaped. 
The repeal of the Test Act, Catholic emancipation, 
the disestabhshment of the Irish Church, are legis- 
lative measures which deserve to rank beside the 
Reform Bill and the abolition of the Corn Laws ; 
and Mr. Gladstone has renewed the discussion of 
civil allegiance which Mr. Pitt opened with the Irish 
universities the very year that our Federal Constitu- 
tion went into operation. The two greatest states- 
men whom this century has produced have expended 
their supreme energies on the question which is, at 
this moment, the fundamental question of European 
politics. Nor have the revolutions of theological 
opinion been less marked. The avowed atheism of 
the Revolution and the undisguised indifference of 
the Empire were succeeded in France by the ultra- 
montane revival of the Restoration ; the bold ra- 
tionalism of Germany issued in the transcendental 
schools, and the various modifications of German 
theology and criticism ; the evangelical movement 
in the English Church was followed by the great 
Tractarian reaction ; while the Council of the Vati- 
can, contemptuously ignoring the political reverses 
of the papacy, proceeded to enunciate dogmas which 
touch, in their application, every state in Christen- 
dom. And while ecclesiastics and statesmen have 
been busied with these discussions, science has ad- 
vanced new theories, which threaten to wipe out the 
lines of former controversies. In the vast range of 
investigation and argument thus disclosed, the most 
earnest and most adventurous thought of our time 
has found ample scope for utterance. It is certainly 



204 RELIGION IN RMERICA. 

a matter of no little interest to ascertain what part 
we have played in this great drama, and how much 
we have contributed to the solution of these perplex- 
ing problems. P>om an estimate of the mere intel- 
lectual value of our civilization such inquiries could . 
hardly be omitted. 

In a survey of our religious progress covering so 
long a period, and presenting so many phases, of 
course only the more salient and characteristic feat- 
ures can be noted. No mention can be made of 
those exceptional manifestations of the religious sen- 
timent, or those reactions of individual opinion, 
which, however interesting in themselves, have left 
no distinct mark on the public mind. It is the main 
current, not the side eddies, that must be considered. 
What seeds, now small and despised, shall attain 
hereafter a vigorous growth it remains for time to 
show. A treatment so general is embarrassed with 
peculiar difficulties, on account of the unexampled 
diversity of religious phenomena which our history 
exhibits. To disentangle from this confused mass 
any common tendencies, to evolve from this disso- 
nance any rhythmic movement, may seem at first 
sight an unpromising experiment, and one that to 
some, no doubt, will appear the less inviting from the 
pervading unpicturesqueness of our religious annals. 
The thrilUng epochs of Old World history are when 
the cross and altar fill the foreground of the picture ; 
when the brilliant narrative groups on a single stage 
all the heroic and venerable figures ; but the huge 
bulk of our American Christianity is broken into 
many fragments ; its energetic life is poured through 
various and widely separated channels ; whatever pf 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 20$ 

romance gilds it belongs to its earliest youth. Yet 
neither the lack of romantic interest nor the hin- 
drances to a satisfactory analysis should deter any 
one from an honest attempt to measure the real suc- 
cess of an experiment in which such great and man- 
ifold issues are involved. 

We shall follow the most simple method if we fix 
our attention, at the outset, on the external features 
of our religious history ; and, beyond question, the 
most characteristic of these is the entire separation 
that obtains, both in our Federal and State systems, 
between the ecclesiastical and the civil province. 
So heartily is this accepted, and so unhesitatingly is 
it maintained, that it ought, perhaps, to be regarded 
less as an external feature than as a fundamental 
maxim of our body politic. He who should deny it 
would find it hard to gain a hearing, and would be 
fortunate if he escaped the reproach of holding an 
unfriendly attitude towards popular liberty itself. 
" It belongs to American liberty," says Lieber, *' to 
separate entirely from the political government the 
institution which has for its object the support and 
diffusion of religion." The broad line of demarka- 
tion between the opinions of to-day and those which 
prevailed a century ago can nowhere be more dis- 
tinctly traced than precisely at this point ; and the 
contrast that is presented the more deserves atten- 
tion for the reason that it has hardly been touched 
upon with sufficient discrimination even by our best 
historians. That in all the colonies, previous to the 
Revolution, there existed a connection, more or less 
close, between religion and the state, is a fact often 
repeated and sufficiently familiar. Such a connec- 
tion may be established in two ways : negatively, by 



206 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

means of tests excluding from public office or the 
civil franchise the professors of a certain faith ; or, 
positively, by means of legislation providing for re- 
ligious establishments, or for the support of public 
worship. The thirteen colonies afforded illustration 
of all these modes. In all there existed religious 
tests, unless we regard as an unauthorized interpo- 
lation a clause by which, in the community which 
welcomed the virtuous Berkeley, Montesquieu and 
Turgot would have been accounted aliens. Even 
Delaware and Pennsylvania, refusing any legal pref- 
erence of religion, denied the franchise to all who 
did not profess faith in Jesus Christ. Most of these 
tests were borrowed from English law, and were due 
to the exigencies of English politics. But through- 
out the Southern colonies the Church of England 
enjoyed a legal recognition. Into Georgia, where 
the social influences that operated farther north 
hardly found a place, it was introduced by the sec- 
ond royal governor. Unmindful of the principle 
which the wise foresight of Locke had sought to 
fix in the '' Grand Model," South Carolina had taken 
the first step in the same direction before the close 
of the seventeenth century. In North Carolina it 
had found a place, though with meagre results, early 
in the eighteenth. In Virginia it was coeval with 
the civil constitution ; and in Maryland, originally 
founded on the principle of complete toleration, it 
had so far triumphed that, in the colony which Cal- 
vert had planted, the rites of the Church of Rome 
could no longer be celebrated. And in New Jersey 
and New York, where the Church was not estab- 
lished, it basked in the sunshine of an official coun- 
tenance that secured it a hardly inferior advantage. 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 20/ 

Yet all this was but an attempt to transplant to the 
New World institutions which in the Old were al- 
ready smitten with decay. The Estabhshment re- 
mained a sickly exotic, striking no deep roots into 
the soil, and it almost withered away when scorched 
by the fervent heat of the Revolutionary epoch. 

The statement has been repeated by writers who 
should be better informed that before the Revo- 
lution the Congregational church system was es- 
tablished after the same plan in the colonies of 
Connecticut and Massachusetts. But in these two 
colonies there was not only no religious establish- 
ment, but even the bare suggestion of one had drawn 
forth an energetic protest. When we study their 
institutions we encounter an experiment the novel 
and unique features of which have been too much 
overlooked. It was not even a reproduction, on 
these shores, of the scheme of Calvin, — at least 
as that scheme was expounded by his disciple Cart- 
wright, and indorsed by the English Presbyterians ; 
for that claimed for the ecclesiastical a complete 
independence of the civil power. From the decrees 
of the clergy there was no appeal. The church was 
a self-subsisting spiritual republic ; and the prov- 
ince of the civil ruler was simply to see that her 
discipline was carried out. According to this theory, 
church and state were essentially distinct, and might 
come into angry collision. But the plan devised by 
the founders of Massachusetts aimed at a blend- 
ing of the two. In their view, "the order of the 
churches and of the commonwealth " formed a com- 
plete and harmonious whole. It was a prophecy of 
the new heavens and of the new earth. Between 
church and state there could exist no antagonism, 



208 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

when both were ahke but shapes in which one in- 
forming spirit masked itself. It is true that long 
before the Revolution this singular system had 
passed away. By the charter of William and Mary 
toleration had been extended to all Protestant creeds, 
and the right of suffrage was no longer restricted 
to church members. But the ideas out of which 
this experiment had grown still survived in a pro- 
found conviction of the indissoluble alliance be- 
tween the spiritual and civil order ; and the staunch 
devotion of the colony to her traditions proved itself 
in an enactment requiring every town to support a 
religious teacher. This legislation rested on the 
unwavering conviction that religion was the founda- 
tion of society, and that the furtherance of rehgion 
was one of the prime functions of the body politic. 
Before we flout the legislators of Massachusetts for 
being behind the age, we should ascertain precisely 
what they sought to do. They were not emptying 
into the cup of colonial liberty the dregs of an old 
experiment. The support of religion, not the en- 
dowment of any specific church establishment, was 
what they had in mind. No doubt the overwhelm- 
ing majority of the population were attached to the 
same form of faith, yet the statute left it open for 
each town to decide what ecclesiastical order it 
would adopt. An arrangement more liberal in prin- 
ciple never was devised. The theory thus applied 
to churches was precisely the same that was ap- 
plied to schools. In this respect the minister and 
the school-master stood on exactly the same footing. 
Every argument that could be adduced in favor of 
giving public support to one could be adduced in 
favor of giving the same support to the other also. 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 209 

Religion and education were alike essential to the 
welfare of the state, and it was equally the concern 
of the state to see that both should flourish. When 
the number of dissenters from the early faith had 
sufficiently increased, the law was modified so as to 
allow each separate congregation to claim its propor- 
tion of the ecclesiastical tax for the support of a 
clergyman of its own persuasion. It contemplated 
no exclusive privilege. 

The conservative character of our Revolution was 
shown in nothing more distinctly than in the delib- 
erate manner in which, under the new political 
order, the several States proceeded to modify the 
old relations between religion and the civil power. 
Of necessity, the formal church establishments 
which existed at the South, identified as they were 
both in religion and form with a foreign and hostile 
power, at once fell to pieces. But it is a somewhat 
rhetorical exaggeration of the fact when our fore- 
most historian tells us "that from the rivers of 
Maine and the hills of New Hampshire to the 
mountain valleys of Tennessee and the borders of 
Georgia, one voice called to the other that there 
should be no connection of church and state." On 
the contrary, in every one of the new constitutions 
framed under the Declaration of Independence, with 
the single exception of that ef New York, some 
connection of church and state was expressly recog- 
nized. Many of the restrictions that were retained 
may be properly described as *' shreds of an old 
system" or "incidental reminiscences of ancient 
usages." Such especially were the tests, having 
their origin not so much in religious as in political 
antagonisms, which denied the franchise to Roman 
14 



2IO RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

Catholics. These purely negative provisions, which 
in this country had little meaning, and were readily 
eliminated, were of a wholly different nature from 
positive enactments in which some of the States em- 
bodied the conviction that religion lay at the foun- 
dation of civil government. Thus, into the Consti- 
tution of Maryland, adopted the very year in which 
independence was declared, a provision was inserted 
making belief in the Christian religion the condi- 
tion of holding any public office. Massachusetts, 
four years later, retained a similar condition. In 
Pennsylvania every member of the Legislature was 
required to avow his belief in God and in the inspi- 
ration of the Old and New Testaments. Delaware 
went still further, and demanded of every public 
officer a declaration of belief in the doctrine of the 
Trinity. The two Carolinas and Georgia required 
of every public functionary that he should profess 
the Protestant religion. Yet it is evident that in 
all these provisions the end in view was not the ex- 
clusion of any particular sect from the civil fran- 
chise, but the assertion of the religious basis of 
civil government. In Maryland and in South Caro- 
lina the public support of religion was still recog- 
nized as a duty of the State. 

This conviction, however, naturally found its most 
emphatic assertion in New England, where the pub- 
lic support of religion was most strongly intrenched 
in popular tradition. As Connecticut continued 
under her colonial charter, without adopting a con- 
stitution, she escaped for the time any discussion 
of the question ; but in Massachusetts it had al- 
ready provoked a bitter controversy, and in the de- 
bates which preceded the adoption of the Constitu- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 211 

tion of 1780 it became the engrossing topic. The 
third article of the Bill of Rights, forming part 
of the Constitution, empowered the Legislature to 
make suitable provision ''for the support and main- 
tenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, re- 
ligion, and morality." Against the whole principle 
of a public support of religion the Baptists had 
long been vehemently protesting. They had felt 
especially aggrieved by a law, passed in 1753, which 
enacted that no person should be reckoned of their 
persuasion whose name was not included in a list, 
the correctness of which must be attested by three 
Baptist churches. By a subsequent statute this 
list was required to be annually exhibited to the 
assessors of each town. Repeated complaints were 
made of grievous persecutions, and the year before 
the first blood of the Revolution was shed at Lex- 
ington, no less than eighteen members of a Bap- 
tist church were imprisoned in Northampton jail for 
refusing to pay ministerial rates. Remonstrances 
were laid before members of the Continental Con- 
gress, then in session at Philadelphia, and before 
the Massachusetts Congress at Cambridge. At the 
Philadelphia conference, which was simply an in- 
formal meeting of certain members of the Con- 
gress, Samuel Adams intimated "that the com- 
plaints came from enthusiasts who made it a merit 
to suffer persecution ; " while John Adams declared 
"■ that a change in the solar system might be ex- 
pected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical 
system of Massachusetts." The opinions of the 
most serious supporters of the law will be found 
reflected in the annual Election sermons of the 
period. In 1770, Samuel Clark, of Cambridge, de- 



212 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

clares " that in a flourishing and respectable civil 
state the worship of God must be maintained." In 
1776, Samuel West, of Dartmouth, says that laws 
for " maintaining public worship and decently sup- 
porting the teachers of religion" are "absolutely 
necessary for the well-being of society." ** The re 
straints of religion would be broken down," said 
Phillips Payson, of Chelsea, in i "jj^, " by leaving the 
subject of public worship to the humors of the mul- 
titude." Rulers, affirmed Simeon Howard, of Bos- 
ton, in 1780, should have power to encourage relig- 
ion, " not only by their example, but by their au- 
thority ; " power not only " to punish profaneness 
and impiety," but to *' provide for the institution 
and support of the public worship of God." A gov- 
ernment which should neglect this would be guilty 
of ''a daring affront to Heaven." These facts are 
sufficient to show that, while no desire existed with 
the great majority of the American people to retain 
rehgious establishments, the doctrine that the civil 
and the spiritual order were essentially related still 
had a powerful hold on the public conscience. Nor 
should this opinion be regarded as the result of any 
special ecclesiastical prejudice. On the contrary, 
it received its most impressive statement from lay- 
men. Thus, when Chief Justice Parsons, who was 
not at the time a member of any church, entered 
upon his official career, he took the earliest oppor- 
tunity to express, in the most solemn manner, his 
conviction of the necessity of a public support of 
religious institutions ; and, still later. Judge Story 
declared that *'it yet remained a problem to be 
solved in human affairs whether any free govern- 
ment can be permanent where the public worship 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 213 

of God and the support of religion constitute no 
part of the policy or duty of the state." 

It is only when we call to mind facts like these 
that we can appreciate the full extent of the revo- 
lution in public sentiment which the past century 
has witnessed. To this result three wholly distinct 
causes have contributed. The first of these was the 
number of religious organizations, widely differing 
in doctrine and worship, which rendered any public 
support of religion almost impracticable, although 
many of these bodies regarded such support without 
disfavor. A second cause was the conscientious 
objection of certain sects to any recognition of re- 
ligion by the civil power. The third and most de- 
cisive cause was the rise of the secular theory of the 
state, a part of the great political development of 
modern times. Those who defended this theory did 
not profess, like the Baptists, to be governed by any 
religious scruples, but advanced the broad doctrine 
that state and church were inherently and essentially 
distinct. The great representative of this view was 
Mr. Jefferson, and it found its first expression in the 
famous Virginia act of 1785, which, in after years, 
he looked back upon as the most creditable achieve- 
ment of his life. The phraseology of this act re- 
flects no less distinctly than the Declaration of In- 
dependence ''the sen:ii-juridical, semi-popular opin- 
ions which were fashionable in France," and marks 
a decisive epoch in the development of American 
political theories. The change is illustrated in the 
two most famous of our political documents. When 
the Declaration of Independence was drawn up it 
was still deemed proper to insert a solemn appeal to 
the Supreme Judge of the world, and an expression 



214 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

of reliance upon the protection of Divine Provi- 
dence ; but when the Federal Constitution was 
framed, a transaction surely not less vitally related 
to the well-being of the nation, all recognition of a 
higher than secular authority was carefully excluded, 
the sole allusion to religion being the provision that 
** no religious tests should ever be required as a qual- 
ification for any office or public trust under the 
United States." The first amendment provided, 
further, that " Congress shall make no law respect- 
ing an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof." The Federal Constitution 
imposed no restriction upon the religious legislation 
of the States, and did not directly affect their action, 
y^et its thoroughly secular character came more and 
more to stamp itself upon them, till at length all 
trace of the former connection between church and 
state had disappeared. Laws for the support of 
public worship lingered in Connecticut till 1816, and 
in Massachusetts till 1833, and religious tests in sev- 
eral States for a few years longer. But public 
opinion, from which all laws proceed, at length de- 
cided that the State, in its essence, was a " purely 
political organism." Provisions regulating the pub- 
lic establishment of religion, requiring the compul- 
sory support of religious teachers, enforcing attend- 
ance upon public worship, restraining the free exer- 
cise of religious functions or the free expression of 
religious belief, have been expunged from the stat- 
ute-book of every State. Not only does the maxim 
universally prevail that no particular form of re- 
ligion should receive the countenance of law, but the 
far more comprehensive principle that the spiritual 
and secular provinces are essentially distinct. Al- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 21 5 

though our practice has not always been consistent 
with this maxim, yet in the main we have come to 
accept a secular theory of government. The effect 
of this upon our political life would furnish an invit- 
ing topic for discussion, but we are here concerned 
only with its bearings upon our rehgious progress. 
There is no necessary connection between sepa- 
ration of church and state, and the subdivision of the 
former into a variety of independent sects. On 
the contrary, the first three centuries of the Chris- 
tian era show that a catholic and a self-sustaining 
Christianity are not incompatible. Still, the unique 
circumstances which shaped the settlement of the 
thirteen colonies, collecting on these shores the rep- 
resentatives of so many nationalities, at the crisis 
when their religious convictions were stimulated to 
the highest pitch, involved contrasts in ecclesiasti- 
cal and theological opinion which the perfect legal 
equality subsequently established powerfully height- 
ened. That tendency to carry conscientious differ- 
ences to the point of separation, which Luther and 
his compeers bequeathed as a legacy to modern 
Christendom, was freed in this country from the re- 
straints which held it partially in check in every 
Protestant state of Europe. The German elector, 
the Dutch burgomaster, the English king, however 
they differed on other points, were all agreed in 
giving legal preference to some particular form of 
faith. Here, for the first tim.e, Protestant sects 
stood on an equal footing, and the national result 
was a variety of religious organizations unexampled 
in the Old World. This result had already shown 
itself before the Revolution ; and Dr. Gordon, the 
future historian of the war, tells us how much he 



2l6 RELIGION IN AMERICA, 

was edified when he landed at Philadelphia, in 1770, 
by the spectacle of '' Papists, Episcopalians, Mo- 
ravians, Lutherans, Calvinists^ Methodists, and Quak- 
ers passing each other peacefully and in good tem- 
per on the Sabbath, after having broken, up their 
respective assemblies." What the good doctor saw 
that Sunday morning was a panorama of our future 
religious history ; for the annals of religion in this 
country are the annals not of one great national 
church, but of many separate communions ; and in 
no other way can we so clearly present to ourselves 
the external features, at least, of our religious prog- 
ress as by placing in contrast the leading religious 
denominations as they existed a century ago and as 
they exist to-day. Such general comparisons do 
not, of course, disclose the more subtile modifica- 
tions of religious life, but they help us to estimate 
the leading drift. And although it has come to be 
the fashion, with some, to speak slightingly of the 
'' popular religions," it is by no means certain that 
opinions are less significant simply because num- 
bers have embraced them. 

At the beginning of the Revolution the Congre- 
gationalists, although confined mainly to New Eng- 
land, formed by far the most numerous and influ- 
ential body. As the total population, of the country 
was still a matter of conjecture, religious statistics 
must, of course, be accepted with allowance ; yet, 
according to the most careful estimate, the Congre- 
gationalists at this time did not possess less than 
seven hundred churches. The number of clergy 
was rather less. But it was not in numbers simply 
that the great strength of the body lay. Unlike any 
other ecclesiastical organization then existing in the 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 21 J 

country, the Congregational churches were a vigor- 
ous native growth. Their distinctive polity, origi- 
nally a part of the civil frame- work, was still linked 
with the same traditions. Hence resulted the im- 
portant circumstance that they had never been a 
dissenting body, and had never felt that galling 
sense of inferiority which is provoked by comparison 
with more favored rivals. From the beginning they 
had been distinguished for conscious independence 
and proud self-respect They had been sometimes 
harsh in their bearing towards others ; but they 
had never themselves been welded together by any 
common suffering for their distinctive ecclesiastical 
discipline. The first generation of their clergy was 
renowned for learning, and a learned ministry had 
always been their pride and boast. No pains were 
spared to save the pulpit from the intrusion of un- 
worthy or unbecoming occupants. So far was this 
feeling carried that in Connecticut a law was passed, 
at a time when the excitement which attended the 
Great Awakening threatened to throw off whole- 
some restraints, providing that no man should be 
entitled to recognition as a clergyman "who was 
not a graduate of Yale or Harvard, or of some for- 
eign university." While the organization of the 
churches trenched on extreme democracy, and, in 
theory, the line between clergyman and layman 
was almost obliterated, in fact the clerical position 
was one of almost unrivaled authority and influence. 
Though possessing no immunities, and connected 
by no official tie, they formed a distinct order and 
enjoyed a social prestige such as was accorded only 
to the most considerable members of the commu- 
nity. The reverential regard in which the New 



2l8 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

England minister of the last century was held has 
nowhere been so vividly depicted as by the late 
President Quincy, whose length of honored days al- 
most linked the extreme terms of the period passing 
under our review. The scene is Andover, Mass., 
and the time a Sunday morning : — 

" The whole space before the meeting-house was filled 
with a waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At 
the moment of service the pastor issued from his man- 
sion, with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, 
with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro 
man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman ; 
the little negroes being distributed, according to their 
sex, by the side of their respective parents. Then fol- 
lowed every other member of the family according to age 
and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat 
of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared the 
congregation, as if led by one spirit, began to move to- 
wards the door of the church ; and, before the proces- 
sion reached it, all were in their places. As soon as the 
pastor entered, the whole congregation rose and stood 
until he was in the pulpit and his family were seated. 
At the close of the service the congregation stood until 
he and his family had left the church. Forenoon and 
afternoon the same course of proceeding was had." 

Not every country parson, of course, lived in the 
style of the Rev. Jonathan French, but all were 
treated with the same deferential homage. This 
illustration of the social position of the New Eng- 
land clergyman is not simply a curious picture of 
the manners of the period, but furnishes an impor- 
tant clew to some of the religious changes afterwards 
witnessed. The clergy formed an extremely aristo- 
cratic class, and it was hardly less their social ami- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 2ig 

nence than their speculative teachings which ulti- 
mately arrayed against them a portion of the popu- 
lation. 

Beneath the apparent unity of the Congregational 
body it was true that silent modifications were 
going on. The austere Puritanism of an earlier 
epoch had " smoothed its wrinkled front." A taste 
for amusements had been introduced on which an 
earlier generation would have frowned. Thus, in 
Whitefield's time, " mixed dancing was very com- 
mon in New England." Even the absence of the 
theatre, on which the law still frowned, was not an 
unmitigated evil ; for a lively French chaplain, who 
was in Boston near the close of the Revolutionary 
War, assures us that " piety was not the only mo- 
tive that brought the American ladies in crowds to 
the various places of worship. Deprived of all shows 
and public diversions, the church is the grand thea- 
tre where they attend to display their extravagance 
and finery. There they come dressed off in silks, 
and overshadowed with a profusion of the finest 
flowers." With these social innovations were dis- 
seminated new modes of thought. There was no 
avowed antagonism to the past, yet there were not 
wanting many indications that the sway of old ideas 
was weakened. The religious revival, which had 
swept through the churches like a whirlwind, divided 
the New England clergy into two parties, who al- 
ready eyed each other with mutual distrust. In 
the country districts Wigglesworth's " Day of 
Doom " was, perhaps, ''taught with the Catechism," 
for half a century ago there were many living who 
could recite from memory the doleful stanzas in 
which the New England Dante makes reprobate in- 



220 RELIGION IN AMERICA, 

fants argue with the Almighty respecting the diffi- 
cult question of Adam's federal headship ; but in 
the towns, especially of Eastern Massachusetts, the 
bard whom Mather so much admired was no longer 
cherished as a " sweet singer." Had not the dis- 
putes with the mother country turned the minds of 
men in a different direction it is not unlikely that 
the controversy which rent the New England 
churches asunder might have been precipitated half 
a century earlier. But the Stamp Act totally eclipsed 
the Five Points of Calvinism. Mayhew, of the West 
Church, the recognized chief of the liberal party 
after 1761, "threw all the might of his great fame 
into the scale of his country." Chauncy succeeded 
him as a leader of popular opinion, and, like May- 
hew, turned wholly from theology to politics. Nor 
in doing this did they turn to an unfamiliar or un- 
congenial field. The relation originally existing be- 
tween religion and the state had always disposed 
the New England clergy to hold political studies in 
the highest estimate. Refusing to regard human 
life as separated into two distinct spheres of action, 
they believed that God could be glorified in the per- 
formance of civil duties, and consistently held their 
town-meetings in the same house in which they paid 
Him their public vows. Locke and Sidney were 
hardly less read than Calvin and Owen. In 1766 we 
find Hollis writing : " More books, especially on gov- 
ernment, are going to New England." This marked 
predilection of the New England clergy for political 
discussion was also a circumstance which had an 
important bearing on their fortunes in later years. 
Next in numbers to the Congregationalists stood 
the Baptists, who were supposed to have, at this 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 221 

time, about three hundred and eighty churches. 
This numerical strength was, however, less real 
than apparent, since most of these organizations 
were insignificant in size and influence. The Bap- 
tists were not confined to New England, but were 
scattered through the colonies, and had become es- 
pecially numerous in Virginia. The story has often 
been repeated that it was from personal observation 
of the working of a small Baptist church, not far 
from his residence, that Mr. Jefferson was first im- 
pressed with the peculiar advantages of direct dem- 
ocratic government. But, notwithstanding their 
numbers, the Baptists, both in New England and 
the South, were held in great disfavor. Originally 
bringing to this country a name identified with the 
worst excesses of the Reformation, and opposing 
themselves with conscientious pertinacity to long- 
established ecclesiastical and political usages, they 
had been made to feel repeatedly the arm of civil 
power. In Massachusetts they had succeeded, af- 
ter a long struggle, in winning a tardy recognition 
of their claims, but under conditions which had 
added to their exasperation. The slender impor- 
tance of the Baptists as a body, even at the begin- 
ning of the Revolution, is plainly enough evinced 
in the contemptuous treatment which they received 
at the hands of the Massachusetts delegation to the 
Continental Congress. Manning, who was one of 
their leaders, speaks of them as " despised and Op- 
pressed." They were even accused of disloyalty to 
the popular cause. Yet, in spite of all this, they 
steadily increased. Two distinct causes contributed 
to this growth. Before all else the Baptists had 
insisted on a personal experience of religion as the 



222 ' RELIGION IN AMERICA, 

absolute condition of admission to the Christian 
church. But this was precisely the doctrine on 
which the leaders of the Great Awakening had 
laid such stress. The great Northampton contro- 
versy had turned on this very point. The inevita- 
ble effect was not only to direct increased attention 
to the tenets of the Baptists, but also to carry over 
to their ranks the numerous congregations of Sep- 
aratists which had been called into existence by the 
conservatism of the Congregational churches. Back- 
us, the faithful historian of the Baptists, was one 
of this description. But, besides this, there was an- 
other and perhaps more potent reason. Religious 
changes are rarely due to the exclusive influence of 
religious causes. A distinctive characteristic of the 
Baptists was the energy with which they extolled 
the gifts of the Spirit, and advocated an unlearned 
ministry. On this latter point, as we have already 
seen, the Congregationalists took high ground. 
Even Edwards, the most powerful promoter of the 
revival, would not allow that a man should enter 
the pulpit "who had had no education at college." 
Against what seemed to them an unrighteous prej- 
udice in favor of " the original tongues," both Sep- 
aratists and Baptists strenuously maintained " that 
every brother that is qualified by God has a right 
to preach according to the measure of faith." 
" Lowly preaching " became their favorite watch- 
word, and it marked the beginning of a popular ten- 
dency destined to make itself deeply felt on the re- 
ligious institutions of New England. The Baptists 
not only gained a controlling influence with a de- 
vout but humble class who had little appetite for 
the elaborate discussions of the Congregational di- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 223 

vines, but they were powerfully helped by the prej- 
udice which exists in every community against the 
exclusiveness of superior culture. The rapid growth 
of the Baptists was, in large part, a democratic pro- 
test ; and it is a noticeable fact that even during 
the war their numbers steadily augmented. 

Third in numerical importance was the religious 
organization at that time known as " the Church of 
England in the colonies." Out of New England 
it included a majority of those whose wealth or so- 
cial consideration gave them influence in the com- 
munity. It was the oldest reHgious body in the 
colonies ; its impressive liturgy was read at James- 
town seven years before the Pilgrims landed at 
Plymouth. In all the Southern colonies it had on 
its side the support of law, and everywhere out of 
New England the powerful countenance of official 
favor. But neither years, nor social consideration, 
nor legal support had secured for it a hardy growth. 
Even in the colonies where it was most firmly 
planted, its clergy were dependent for ordination on 
the mother country, and in New England both for 
ordination and maintenance. In New England they 
remained to the last hardly more than missionaries. 
There existed a wide-spread suspicion that in some 
way they were rendered subservient to the political 
designs of the British government. The scheme of 
erecting an Episcopate over the colonies contrib- 
uted, Mr. Adams tells us, as much as any other 
cause, '' to close thinking on the constitutional au- 
thority of Parliament." Nor was political prejudice, 
by any means, the only thing that had impaired its 
influence. In Maryland and Virginia, where its 
strength was greatest, the careless lives of the clergy 



224 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

had alienated numbers of those who were sincerely 
attached to its forms. Before any political antago- 
nisms had been excited, " the church was becoming 
more and more unpopular, because it was not con- 
sidered as promoting piety." Jonathan Boucher, 
a clergyman of much intelligence, long settled in 
Virginia, whose sermons throw a clear light both 
upon the political and religious issues of the period, 
frankly confesses, that "whatever might be the case 
with the people of the north, those of the middle 
and southern provinces were certainly not remark- 
able for taking much interest in the concerns of re- 
ligion." After the overthrow of the establishment, a 
considerable proportion of the Virginia clergy " con- 
tinued to enjoy the glebes, without performing a 
single act of sacred duty." It was estimated that 
at least two thirds of the population of that colony 
had attached themselves to other religious bodies. 
The Revolution bore, of necessity, on this church 
with crushing weight. It was " reduced almost to 
annihilation ; " many despaired '' as to the perpetu- 
ating of the communion otherwise than in connec- 
tion with an establishment." When the struggle 
for independence began, the clergy, with a few not- 
able exceptions, were hostile or lukewarm. Their 
conduct was conscientious, but it was not the less 
fatal to their popular influence. At the close of the 
war many entertained scruples about taking the 
oath of allegiance required in some of the States, 
while others declined to conduct public worship on 
account of their canonical obligation to use the un- 
abridged liturgy of the Church of England. Doubts 
were even expressed by some of the laity as to the 
desirableness of retaining the Episcopal office. In 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 22$ 

Virginia, where there was no prejudice against the 
ecclesiastical constitution of the church, Patrick 
Henry had "hurled the hot thunderbolts of his 
wrath against the tithe-gathering clergy ; " in New 
England, where it stood opposed to local traditions, 
*' the breath of popular sentiment set so strongly 
against it that its continuance was almost as preca- 
rious as that of a newly transplanted tree amidst 
the sweepings of the wHirlwinds." Even in Penn- 
sylvania, where neither of the influences just re- 
ferred to operated. Dr. White " was, for some time, 
the only clergyman." 

About equal to the Church of England in num- 
ber of congregations, though not in clerical force, 
were the Presbyterians, who did not exist in the 
colonies as an organized body till the early part of 
the eighteenth century. At the epoch of our sur- 
vey they numbered three hundred churches, their 
main strength lying in the Middle States. The 
original members of this communion were almost 
exclusively of Scotch or Irish-Scotch descent, — a 
circumstance which has colored their whole history. 
Unlike the Congregationalists of New England, 
with whom at this time they heartily sympathized in 
theological opinion, they had brought with them to 
this country a completely developed ecclesiastical 
polity, for which they had suffered bitter persecu- 
tion, and to which they clung with the devotion 
which sacrifice inspires. The Congregationalists, 
their veins flowing with pure English blood, had 
boldly struck out new paths ; the Presbyterians, 
with the resolute tenacity characteristic of the Scot- 
tish race, clung to the old. The Great Awakening, 
which shook Congregationalism to its centre, had 
15 



226 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

also for a time divided them, but attachment to a 
common system soon triumphed over Old Side and 
New Side differences, and the controversy left no 
permanent memorial but the famous college which, 
founded by the radical party, has since become the 
Ehrenbreitstein of Presbyterian conservatism. The 
early Presbyterians brought with them profound re- 
spect for letters, and they insisted hardly less stren- 
uously than the Congregationalists that the teachers 
of the people should be themselves well taught. In 
the ranks of their clergy were men of varied and 
accurate learning, not a few having been trained in 
foreign universities. Some were eminent for clas- 
sical scholarship. If inferior to the New England 
clergy in aptitude for metaphysical speculation, they 
were equal, at least, in Biblical learning, and superior 
in pulpit power. Their eminence as preachers was 
mainly due to the fact that they were trained to 
speak without notes, while the New England minis- 
ter was closely confined to his elaborately written 
manuscript. Even up to the close of the last cen- 
tury the prejudice against preaching written ser- 
mons was still so strong in the Presbyterian church 
^' that a man's reputation would be ruined should his 
manuscript be seen." The Presbyterian clergy also 
cultivated at all times the practice of . Scriptural ex- 
position, while in New England reading a chapter of 
the Bible in public worship was looked upon as a 
long step in the direction of a liturgy. Dr. Hop- 
kins, who ventured upon the dangerous feat during 
his ministry in Western Massachusetts, brought on 
himself a storm of opposition. When the Revolu- 
tion came, the Presbyterians were staunch advocates 
of popular rights, and in the Middle States were the 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 22/ 

main support of the cause of independence. All 
their traditions were on the side of resistance to 
oppression. Among them at this time were num- 
bered those whose fathers had fought in the dikes 
of Holland and on the bloody fields of France, as 
well as in Highland glens and behind the walls of 
Derry. Nothing in their history or temper disposed 
them to remain silent when a great struggle was 
going on. Neither in Scotland nor in this country 
did they hesitate to act according to their convic- 
tions. The direction of their pohtical sympathy 
was shown in the name selected for their college, — 
Nassau Hall, — and from the presidency of Nassau 
Hall the accomplished Witherspoon went to take 
his seat in the Continental Congress. The Revolu- 
tion reenforced the Presbyterian church by estab- 
lishing the republican principle on which the Pres- 
byterian polity was rested. 

Of the minor religious bodies existing a century 
ago less need be said, as they influenced but little 
the general current of events. Of these the Re- 
formed Dutch, the Lutheran, and the German Re- 
formed were in numbers nearly equal, each having 
about sixty congregations. But the Reformed 
Dutch, though long established and highly respect- 
able for the character and learning of its clergy, 
was almost debarred from growth by its close de- 
pendence upon the Church of Holland and its per- 
sistent use of the Dutch language in public wor- 
ship, — a practice kept up in many churches till 
the beginning of the present century. The Lu- 
theran church, linked in its origin with memories 
of Gustavus and Oxenstern, was confined to the 
German emigration, a large proportion of its clergy 



228 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

having been educated at the University of Halle or 
at Franke's Orphan House. The German Re- 
formed, as its name implies, included that part of 
the German population which refused assent to the 
Augsburg Confession. In form of government the 
three were Presbyterian. The small body of Asso- 
ciate Presbyterians, a secession from the Scottish 
Kirk, should be reckoned in the same family. Ac- 
cording to Bishop England's estimate, the whole 
number of Roman Catholic clergy in the country 
did not exceed twenty-six, though the congregations 
were perhaps twice as numerous. The rites of the 
church were publicly celebrated nowhere but in 
Philadelphia. A few gentle Moravians had followed 
Zinzendorf to the New World, and their communion, 
Episcopal in government, but Lutheran in doctrine, 
comprised eight congregations. Methodism had 
been introduced, but whether by Strawbridge in 
1764, or by Embury in 1766, is still disputed. Up 
to the Revolution, however, the body had no distinct 
existence in this country ; and as soon as hostilities 
commenced all the preachers except Asbury hur- 
ried back to England. As early as 1770, John Mur- 
ray, whose curious autobiography should be studied 
by all who would understand the early history of 
this country, had begun to preach the doctrine of 
universal salvation ; but as on other points he did 
not differ from the orthodox creed he was at first 
admitted to Congregational and even to Episcopal 
pulpits. The Quakers were still numerous in the 
colony which Penn had founded, and the great Lis- 
bon earthquake sent to Newport a small but wealthy 
society of Jews. The summer visitor, strolling 
through the streets of the ''fair seaport town," 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 229 

pauses to gaze at the sepulchral stones carved with 
strange characters which recall a faith whose hoary 
traditions make our modern creeds seem but of yes- 
terday. 

" Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, 
No Psalms of David now the silence break j 
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue 
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake." 

The first impression that we derive from the fore- 
going facts is that of the diversity of religious belief 
existing in the colonies, but a more careful analysis 
will show that beneath this apparent diversity there 
was a widely pervading unity. Between the ecclesias- 
tical polity of the Congregationalists and the Bap- 
tists there was no essential difference ; while the 
systems of the Presbyterians, the Lutheran, the 
Dutch Reformed, and the German Reformed were 
alike in everything but the nomenclature adopted. 
And between all these, with the exception of the 
Lutheran, comprising together more than three 
fourths of all the churches, there existed the most 
entire harmony of dogmatic faith. That faith, 
whether embodied in the Assembly's Catechism, 
the Heidelberg Confession, or the Articles of the 
Synod of Dort, was the logical and precise system 
which the Reformer who " pierced to the roots " had 
knit with hooks of steel to the sternest hearts of the 
sixteenth century. It was the faith of John Knox, 
of William the Silent, and of Admiral Coligny ; and 
could the heroic founder of the ill-fated Huguenot 
colony in Florida have lifted the veil that hid the 
two succeeding centuries, and have seen the flag of 
Geneva flying in almost undisputed triumph from the 
Merrimac to the St. John's, he might have deemed 



230 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

the dark crime of Menendez more than avenged. 
These churches, too, whether in the parochial au- 
tonomy of the Congregationahsts or the synodical 
federation of the Presbyterians, were singularly in 
harmony with the political movement; and that re- 
publican states and republican churches would flour- 
ish side by side seemed a conclusion admitting 
of no doubt. In 1783 the famous Dr. Stiles, the 
president of Yale College, preached the Election 
Sermon before the Legislature of Connecticut. His 
inspiring theme was " The Future Glory of the 
United States," and, warming to the hazardous role 
of a prophet, he declared " that when we look for- 
ward and see this country increased to forty or fifty 
millions, while we see all the religious sects increased 
into respectable bodies, we shall doubtless find the 
united body of the Congregational and Presbyterian 
churches making an equal figure with any two of 
them." Then enumerating the lesser sects, he con- 
siderately adds : " There are Westleians, Mennon- 
ists, and others, all of which will make a very incon- 
siderable amount in comparison with those who will 
give the rehgious complexion to America." And 
there was no man living at that time whose opinion 
on this matter was entitled to more respect. 

We have now reached the limit of forty millions, 
and in the light of the census of 1870 the vaticina- 
tions of the learned president will deserve to be 
regarded as curiosities of literature. The Congre- 
gationahsts, who in his day were double the size of 
any other body, now rank as seventh, while the 
"Westleians," whom he hardly names, stand largely 
in advance of all the rest. A century ago the more 
important religious bodies were ranked in the fol- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 23 1 

lowing order: Congregational, Baptist, Church of 
England, Presbyterian, Lutheran, German Reformed, 
Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic. By the census 
of 1870 they stood : Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, 
Roman Catholic, Christian, Lutheran, Congrega- 
tional, Protestant Episcopal. Tested not as in the 
foregoing comparison by number of churches, but by 
number of sittings, the order remains the same for 
the four larger, but the Congregationalists and Epis- 
copalians would outrank the Lutherans and Christians. 
Tested again by value of church property, the Roman 
Catholics come second, and the Episcopalians fifth. 
Yet far more striking than these relative contrasts is 
the enormous growth of American Christianity as a 
whole, — a growth which, as the figures clearly show, 
has more than kept pace with the rapid stride of 
population. A careful estimate makes the whole 
number of religious organizations existing in the 
country at the beginning of the Revolution less than 
nineteen hundred and fifty. The total population 
was then estimated at three and a half millions, 
which would show a church for every seventeen 
hundred souls. By the recent census, the total 
number of church organizations is returned at more 
than seventy-two thousand, which, in a population, 
of thirty-eight millions, would show a church for 
every five hundred and twenty-nine. In other words, 
while the population has multiplied eleven-fold, the 
churches have multiplied nearly thirty-seven fold. 
The aggregate value of church property cannot be 
subjected to the same test, since we have no means 
of estimating the amount a century ago ; but in 1870 
it reached the considerable sum of three hundred 
and fifty-four millions. An illustration of the work- 



232 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

ing of the voluntary principle is furnished in the fact 
that the church which seemed hopelessly ship- 
wrecked by the Revolution, and which, as some of 
its most sincere supporters thought, had no prospect 
of existing without the public aid on which it had 
so long depended, now ranks for its property as fifth 
in the whole land. A recent Bampton lecturer af- 
firmed that the experiments of voluntaryism and 
disestablishment, when tried in England under the 
most favorable circumstances, had proved signal 
failures. In this country the church of Hooker and 
Tillotson has certainly shown herself able to go 
alone. But the most extraordinary increase of ec- 
clesiastical wealth is seen with the Methodists and 
Roman Catholics, because a century ago they had 
absolutely nothing. Indeed, the rapid ratio of in- 
crease during the last two decades might well attract 
attention, were it not that this vast amount of prop- 
erty is distributed among so many different bodies. 
Such statistics are of course very unsatisfactory tests 
of the real growth of religion. Even could the pre- 
cise number of professed Christians be ascertained, 
we should still be quite as much in the dark. The 
subtle forces of the invisible world disdain the rules 
of arithmetic. Yet statistics, after all, afford us the 
only means of reaching general conclusions ; and 
much as we hear of the decay of faith, and of the 
growth of religious indifference, it seems certain, 
from this comparison, that the positive institutions 
of religion have not, during the last century, lost 
their hold on the mass of the American people. A 
more zealous and liberal support has nowhere been 
accorded to them. 

Facts like these lie, however, on the surface, and 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 233 

similar comparisons might be multiplied to any 
length. It will form a more instructive task to trace 
the less obvious phenomena of our complex religious 
life. We have seen that a century ago the specula- 
tive faith of the various religious bodies then exist- 
ing in America was singularly homogeneous. The 
church organizations that gave tone to American 
society heartily agreed in accepting the most pre- 
cise dogmatic system to which Protestantism had 
given birth. Perhaps no feature of our religious 
progress is more striking than the wide-spread reac- 
tion that has been witnessed, not so much against 
any particular tenet of the old theology as against 
the whole dogmatic apprehension of Christianity. 
How far this reaction has been helped by any change 
of political sentiment is a curious question, but one 
not easily answered. Mr. Lecky expresses the opin- 
ion that, '* if in the sphere of religion the rational- 
istic doctrine of personal merit and demerit should 
ever completely supersede the theological doctrine 
of hereditary merit and demerit, the change will 
mainly be effected by the triumph of democratic 
principles in the sphere of politics ; " and he might 
have drawn an illustra,tion of his theory from the 
fact that the great religious revolt in this country 
from the exclusiveness of Calvinism was coincident 
wdth the great democratic revolt from the conserva- 
tive politics of the founders of the republic. If a 
connection could be established between the two, it 
would be by no means the first instance of two 
movements essentially distinct, yet due, in some 
measure, to the same general causes. This religious 
reaction assumed various forms, and was attended 
with very different results. Its most direct and 



234 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

obvious effect was seen in the rise of new religious 
sects, but its influence was destined to be powerfully 
felt in modifying some already existing. One of its 
earliest fruits was the formation, near the close of 
the last century, of the '' United Brethren in Christ," 
made up of seceders from the German Reformed 
and Lutheran bodies, and now numbering nearly 
fifteen hundred churches. The numerous sect of 
" Christians," which sprang up simultaneously in 
three different localities, near the beginning of the 
present century, and now numbers more than thirty- 
five hundred churches, was an illustration of the 
same movement. So was the remarkable '^ Decla- 
ration " of Alexander Campbell in 1807. But by 
far the most important phase of this reaction is 
shown in the enormous growth of Methodism. It 
would argue a most superficial acquaintance with this 
great movement to define it as essentially a protest ; 
but it is not the less true that in the religious his- 
tory of this country Methodism represents a profound 
popular reaction. In this light the rise of this great 
and influential body must be viewed as the most 
signal rehgious fact which the past century pre- 
sents. When their first conference met at Baltimore 
in 1784 they collected but sixty preachers, and it was 
reckoned that in the whole country they could mus- 
tCx' but twenty more. Dr. Stiles did them no injus- 
tice when he spoke of them in his Election Sermon 
as "very inconsiderable." They were not only few 
in number, but poor and unknown ; they worshipped 
in barns, in back streets, and beneath the canopy of 
heaven. By the census of 1870 they were credited 
with more than twenty-five thousand parish organ- 
izations, and a church property of seventy millions. 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 235 

Their own statistics for the past year give more 
than twenty-six thousand preachers, and a church 
property of more than eighty miUions. The churches 
have increased at the rate of two for each secular 
day throughout the year. They are now by far the 
most numerous religious organization in the land, 
and with a zeal and confidence fully proportioned 
to their strength. A phenomenon so striking can- 
not be explained but from the operation of some 
powerful cause. The growth of Methodism may be 
attributed in part to its wonderful organization ; yet 
it would seem that in this country the extremely 
autocratic character of that organization, while se- 
curing it extraordinary efficiency, could not have 
gained it popular favor. The vital power of Meth- 
odism must be sought, not in its form, but in its 
spirit. It is impossible to account for its rapid 
growth, save on the hypothesis that it met a great 
popular want. And it is equally impossible not to 
recognize the fact that this adaptation lay in the 
sharp contrast which it presented to the prevailing 
faith. The immense popular influence of Methodism 
lay in its bold appeal from '' the theology of the in- 
tellect " to " the theology of the feelings." Calvin- 
ism, throughout all its camps, " lay intrenched in the 
outworks of the understanding ; " but to souls sated 
with theological formulas, Methodism, with its di- 
rect intuitions of divine truth, came like springs of 
water in a dry and thirsty land. Wesley rejected 
all creeds but the simple symbol of the Apostles ; 
and if his American disciples departed from his ex- 
ample in adopting articles of faith, they conformed 
to his spirit in making these articles " a simple com- 
pendium of the Universal Church, excluding even 



236 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

the peculiar features of the Wesleyan theology." 
They insisted, always and everywhere, that religious 
faith is not a logical conviction. Making their ap- 
peal at once to man's spiritual nature, laying no 
stress on nice theological distinctions, they naturally 
held knowledge of Greek and Latin in light esteem 
as a qualification for saving souls. Not one of the 
men who founded Methodism in America, with the 
single exception of Coke, had received a college 
education. Asbury, whose influence was incompa- 
rably greater than that of Coke, had never enjoyed 
this advantage. The great feature of early Method- 
ism was its faith in immediate inspiration. Its lead- 
ers lived, like Loyola, in a world of ecstatic visions. 
Not only were they inwardly called of God, but some- 
times, Hke Garrettson, they heard the audible voice 
of the Spirit. The religious Genius of New England 
had recognized in love the benign sum of all moral- 
ity ; but the doctrine which his followers had ob- 
scured with the metaphysics of the will, became with 
the Methodist a burning impulse. The Quaker had 
exalted the Inner Light, but what with the disciple 
of Fox had sunk into an inoffensive quietism, with 
the disciple of Wesley became the impulse to an 
unexampled effort. It was estimated that Asbury, 
during the forty-five years of his untiring ministry, 
rode a distance that would have taken him twelve 
times round the earth. When we read the story 
which one of the early missionaries of Methodism 
tells of himself, but a story which hundreds, doubt- 
less, might have repeated, — " I traversed the moun- 
tains and valleys, frequently on foot, with my knap- 
sack on my back, guided by Indian paths in the 
wilderness where it was not expedient to take a 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 237 

horse ; and I had often to wade through morasses 
half-leg deep in mud and water ; frequently satisfy- 
ing my hunger with a piece of bread and pork from 
my knapsack, quenching my thirst from a brook, 
and resting my weary limbs on the leaves of trees," 
who does not seem to hear in these words the ring 
of the verses, "In journey ings often, in perils of wa- 
ters, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and 
painfulness, in hunger and thirst ; " and who can 
doubt that the causes which gave Methodism its 
early success were the same that first carried the 
gospel to Damascus, to Antioch, to Corinth, and 
to Caesar's palace ? As Methodism has exchanged 
weakness for strength, and poverty for wealth, its 
outward aspect has greatly altered : the plain meet- 
ing-house has become the highly decorated church ; 
the unlettered preacher has learned to emulate the 
culture which he once held so cheap ; colleges and 
theological schools have been generously endowed ; 
and a powerful periodical press discusses with dignity 
and erudition doctrines which once struggled for ut- 
terance from burning tongues ; yet neither learning 
nor culture were theweapons with which Methodism 
achieved its early triumphs, and which caused it, in 
the striking words carved on Philip Embury's tomb, 
"to beautify the earth with salvation." 

At first glance it may seem that the growth of 
the Baptist denomination, which now ranks as sec- 
ond in the land in point of numbers, contradicts 
what has been advanced, since the Baptists, in the 
usual acceptation of that name, are a Calvinistic 
body. But while it is true that this body, as a whole, 
accept the modified Calvinism of Andrew Fuller, yet 
it is not the less true that their distinctive tenet in- 



238 RELIGION IN AMERICA, 

volves a logical denial of that " doctrine of heredi- 
tary merit and demerit " which lies at the base of 
the Calvinistic scheme. Every speculative objec- 
tion to infant baptism was equally an argument 
against the realistic conception which pervaded the 
old theology. As a natural result of this attitude 
no characteristic of the Baptists has been more 
marked than their contempt for all the historical 
statements of Christianity. They have made their 
appeal to Scripture as the sole authority. .This, in- 
deed, is defined by their most eminent American 
representative as their *' fundamental principle ; " 
and to this principle, through all their history, they 
have steadfastly adhered. The much-vaunted maxim, 
" The Bible, the Bible only," has found with them 
its most consistent advocates. Like the Method- 
ists, they have undergone, in the course of a cen- 
tury, a great change in external features. Re- 
nouncing their preference for " lowly preaching," 
they have become zealous promoters of ministerial 
education. Among their divines are men whose 
names are ornaments of American scholarship, but 
it is a noticeable fact that their valuable contribu- 
tions to religious literature have all been in the line 
of BibHcal exegesis ; to speculative theology they 
have made no important addition. Nor can it be 
doubted that their great popular success is due to 
the concrete simplicity oi their creed, coupled with 
their extremely democratic polity. And whatever 
their technical theological position, their whole de- 
nominational strain has been in the direction of re- 
volt from antiquity, tradition, and church authority. 
But the boldest renunciation of dogmatic faith 
was witnessed among the descendants of the Pu- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 239 

ritans. This outbreak had two phases. The re- 
strained and scholarly Arminianism, which made its 
appearance first, appealed to Scripture from human 
creeds ; yet in its philosophical method and formal 
conceptions of religious truth it did not differ from 
the Calvinism, to which it stood opposed. Both 
accepted Locke, whose system sapped the founda- 
tions of the old theology. The real revolt was the 
rise of the Transcendental school, which threw all 
external authority to the winds, and owned no guide 
but the spiritual intuitions. The " Address to the 
Divinity School " was the veritable proclamation of 
a new gospel, — a gospel which indeed " ravished the 
souls " of the elect, but proved too subtle and ethe- 
real to become " bread of life to millions." This 
ambrosial food was transmuted into homelier diet by 
Mr. Parker, and has served to furnish the board of 
the later Free Religionists. 

In resisting the Unitarians, the more numerous 
section of the Congregationalists were betrayed into 
a position which their own traditions did not jus- 
tify, and the way to the Lord's table was fenced 
with " sound forms of words." But various influ- 
ences soon began to work in an opposite direction. 
The Evangelical revival, by laying as it did such 
stress on emotional experience, weakened the hold 
of objective truth. The great impulse given at An- 
dover to Biblical study, under the inspiring lead of 
Stuart, disclosed the weakness of the old exegesis, 
and introduced the more comprehensive methods of 
German criticism. And a small but thoughtful and 
cultivated section, deriving from Coleridge the fruit- 
ful maxim that " Christianity is not a theory or 
speculation, but a living process," rallied the Tran- 



240 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

scendental philosophy to the support of Christian 
faith. Thus the orthodox mind of New England 
was gradually loosed from its old moorings. The 
change was shown less in direct antagonism to 
any specific doctrine than in silent modification 
of mental habits. What had been betokened by 
more than one significant sign was at last brought 
clearly to light in the Congregational Council con- 
vened at Boston in 1865, an assembly which justly 
attracted attention for its intelligence and dignity. 
At this convention an attempt was made to agree 
upon some doctrinal basis for the denomination ; 
but after earnest discussion the utmost that could 
be accomplished was to ''affirm substantially " the 
Confessions of 1648 and 1680, in face of the dec- 
laration made by a leading member of the body 
that " there is language in every one of these old 
standards which not a man upon this floor re- 
ceives." Many preferred a declaration " according 
to the fresh language of the present time," but the 
committee to whom the matter was referred de- 
clined to present one, for the reason " that it could 
not be harmoniously adopted." And in taking their 
action it was expressly understood that the Council 
affirmed those venerable formulas ** only in a qual- 
ified manner." A " compromise document " was 
subsequently adopted by the Council, with much so- 
lemnity, at Plymouth. But so rapid was the march 
of opinion that at the Oberlin Council, held only 
six years later, the declaration adopted at Plymouth 
was discarded, on the ground of " committing the 
denomination to old and minute confessions ; " and 
a new one was adopted, '* being in substance the 
great doctrines of the Christian faith," of which the 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 24 1 

odd remark was made that it " did not perfectly ex- 
press the exact wishes of any party." Of this coun- 
cil a very high authority declared, " It may truly 
and frankly be called a new departure." This new 
departure consisted in the fact that, without disown- 
ing old confessions, it " refused to make them tests 
of fellowship." Accordingly the Council received as 
full members the Kentucky delegates, who distinctly 
explained that " their churches were organized on 
the evangeUcal basis, ignoring all distinction be- 
tween Calvinist and Arminian." " There can be no 
doubt," wrote a prominent member of the Council, 
" that the progress of Congregationalism has been 
greatly retarded by the former limitation of its de- 
nominational fellowship to Calvinistic ministers and 
churches." Here is a distinct repudiation of the 
position asserted with so much earnestness sixty 
years before. 

It is a characteristic of American religious life, 
compounded as it is of such various elements, that 
it presents many diverse phenomena; and we should 
run the risk of very imperfect generalization if any 
one class were made too prominent. Coupled with 
this marked reaction against a dogmatic apprehen- 
sion of religion there has been a tendency equally 
marked and equally important in an opposite direc- 
tion, — a tendency that does not any less deserve to 
be regarded as a representative movement in our 
religious history. In all countries where a connec- 
tion between church and state is recognized, whether 
Catholic or Protestant, the ecclesiastical power is 
subject to important limitation ; for the permanent 
contact of the spiritual and temporal authority re- 
quires that the sphere of either should be precisely 
16 



242 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

marked. This rule holds as well in Portugal as it 
holds in Prussia. Thus, when the relations of the 
two are not inimical, the free action of the church 
is fettered. Hence, in this country, where for the 
first time since Constantine the religious element 
has been left absolutely without restraint, condi- 
tions of ecclesiastical development have been sup- 
plied such as exist nowhere else in Christendom. 
Each religious organization has been allowed free 
scope to unfold according to its own interior law, 
and solve after its own way its distinctive ecclesias- 
tical problem. The result has been a quickening 
of ecclesiastical activity and an impulse to ecclesias- 
tical development, which already constitute a sig- 
nificant feature of our history, and promise to re- 
vive questions which were supposed to have been 
forever settled. Here, again, an interesting ques- 
tion presents itself, — the question whether any con- 
nection can be traced between this tendency to 
strong religious organizations and the general laxity 
in our political ideas. It is certain that the ecclesi- 
astical life of the Middle Age was greatly stimulated 
by the prevailing political anarchy, and it seems 
not unlikely that the increasing fluctuation of our 
own poUtical life may have disposed some to look 
with more favor upon stable ecclesiastical forms. 
But whatever may be the occult cause of the phe- 
nomenon, its existence is beyond question. It is a 
common impression that the prevailing impulse of 
American religion is to split up into an endless va- 
riety of sects. " How can I live in a country," Dr. 
DoUinger is reported to have said, "where they 
found a new church every day } " But nothing ap- 
pears more certain, from a review of our religious 



RELIGION- IN AMERICA. 243 

history, than the gradual working of a tendency in 
precisely the opposite direction. The multiplicity 
of sects is, indeed, a patent fact, and in a land where 
expression of opinion on all subjects is unrestrained, 
and where combination for every purpose is al- 
lowed, such a result is not surprising ; but most of 
the petty organizations that go to swell the porten- 
tous aggregate are but ripples on the surface of the 
stream, appearing for a moment and then vanish- 
ing forever. In their most repulsive forms they 
are mere social excrescences, deriving their morbid 
growth mainly from foreign sources. The most 
characteristic fact of our religious history, as the 
census clearly shows, is not the tendency of Amer- 
ican Christianity to split up into a multiplicity of 
sects, but its disposition to aggregate itself under 
a few great denominational types. This conserv- 
ative preference of the vast majority for stable eccle- 
siastical order is a leading and unmistakable dis- 
tinction of our religious life. Whatever may have 
been the tendency at an earlier period, at the pres- 
ent time it is undeniably in this direction. 

We have already noticed that the religious or- 
ganizations which were transplanted to this country 
seemed, under the inspiration of our institutions, to 
acquire new energy. This result was witnessed 
with the Methodists, who, in England, during Wes- 
ley's life, had clung to the skirts of the Establish- 
ment, but here boldly organized a complete church, 
and proceeded to the institution of bishops. The 
success of the Methodists was due hardly less to 
their autocratic discipline than to their burning zeal. 
And it should be observed that it is the recognized 
value of the system which has commended it to pop- 



244 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

ular regard. But a more important illustration of 
the same principle is presented in the Presbyte- 
rian Church. The history of this influential body, 
which now ranks as third in the country, is espe- 
cially instructive, for the reason that its uniform and 
healthy growth is not connected, as is that of the 
Methodists, with exceptional phenomena, but is the 
evident result of the persistent and intelligent ad- 
ministration of an admirable polity. In the face of 
the proudest monarchy of Europe, it had proclaimed 
its capacity of self-direction, and in the new field 
which this country opened it was not backward in 
asserting a logical development. No sooner was the 
Revolution ended than the Presbyterians took the 
first steps towards a complete organization ; and 
before the Federal government had gone into opera- 
tion the constitution of the church was adopted as 
it now stands. From the outset it assumed the 
character of a missionary church, and in the earliest 
General Assembly a plan was adopted for promot- 
ing the evangelization of the West ; and in the most 
gloomy period of our religious history, the closing 
decade of the last century, when the wide diffusion 
of P'rench Revolutionary maxims " threatened the 
dissolution of religious society," the growth of the 
Presbyterian Church was uniform and rapid. Noth- 
ing is so characteristic of this church as the reso- 
lution with which it has adhered to its theological 
and its ecclesiastical traditions. Amid the great 
movements of modern thought, it has stood un- 
flinchingly to its Confession, and in the great crises 
of its history has been thoroughly consistent with it- 
self. When the West was frenzied with religious ex- 
citement, rather than relax its requirements for the 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 245 

ministry, it submitted to the great Cumberland 
secession of 18 10, preferring well-tried method to 
mere numerical increase ; and when, in consequence 
of the famous " Plan of Union," it found itself in- 
vaded with New England usages and New England 
ideas, it preferred the excision of nearly half its 
members rather than not purge itself of the foreign 
element. Whatever successes it has gained have 
not been gained by denying its principles, or by mak- 
ing terms with its opponents. The steady growth of 
this powerful communion, in the face of its uncom- 
promising assertion of a rigid dogmatic system, fur- 
nishes a striking illustration of the decided prefer- 
ence of a most intelligent section of the American 
people for a vigorous and well-administered ecclesi- 
astical system. The Reunion of 1871, when, after 
a separation of more than thirty years, the two 
branches of the Presbyterian Church were once 
more happily united, whether considered in its im- 
mediate or its ultimate consequences, is second in 
importance to no recent event of our religious his- 
tory. It fixed universal attention as showing that 
the tide had turned, and that the weary period of 
discord and secession was to give way to a new 
period of union and consolidation. There seems no 
good reason why other Presbyterian bodies should 
not follow the example. 

This marked preference of the majority of our peo- 
ple for well-ordered system may be still more con- 
clusively shown from contrasting the progress of the 
Congregational and Presbyterian bodies. A cen- 
tury ago the Congregationalists were by far the more 
numerous and influential. The two were in close 
sympathy, and Congregational delegates were al- 



246 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

lowed to sit and vote in the General Assembly. Both 
cordially united in the " Plan of Union " for com- 
bined missionary operations at the West ; but it was 
found that whenever the stronger organization came 
into contact with the weaker, the weaker was uni- 
formly swallowed up, and the result was an immense 
loss of strength to the Congregational communion. 
It would, however, be an error to represent that 
the change in the relative strength of the Presby- 
terians and Congregationalists was due wholly to 
difference of polity. Other causes contributed to 
weaken Congregationalism in its own seats. The 
proclivity of the Congregational clergy for political 
discussion, so conspicuous in the period preceding 
the Revolution, was hardly less marked daring the 
stormy times that preluded the memorable " Civil 
Revolution of Eighteen Hundred." Almost to a 
man the Congregational clergy of New England 
were on the Federal side. The biographer of Mr. 
Jefferson complains with bitterness that the minis- 
ters were all for Hamilton. As an inevitable result, 
the Democratic triumph swept from the New Eng- 
land parishes all whose sympathies were pledged to 
the victorious faction, and considerable numerical 
strength, if not much piety, was carried over to rival 
congregations. But the fatal wound was inflicted 
upon New England Congregationalism, not by an 
enemy but by its own hand. The doctrinal antago- 
nism which the Revolution for a time had smoth- 
ered blazed up at the publication of Belsham's " Life 
of Lindsey" ; and when Channing preached his fa- 
mous sermon at Baltimore the divorce between the 
main body of Congregationalists and their oldest 
traditions and finest culture was complete. Hence- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 247 

forth the New England Israel, that had come out 
of Egypt so gloriously, pursued two separate paths, 
and presented the unedifying spectacle of a house 
divided against itself. 

This impulse of our leading religious bodies to a 
complete logical development has naturally led to a 
sharper accentuation of ecclesiastical distinctions. 
The Protestant Episcopal Church furnishes a strik- 
ing illustration of this tendency. Attaining its com- 
plete organization in 1789,. when White and Provost 
were consecrated at Lambeth Palace, during its 
early years it reflected the moderate temper of the 
Enghsh Church of the last century. Its leading 
characteristic was eminent respectability ; its preach- 
ing had the mild accent of that apologetic period 
when, as Johnson put it, the apostles were tried reg- 
ularly once a week on charge of committing forgery. 
Bishop White, whose unswerving support of the 
cause of independence showed that he was lacking 
in no manly element, as a preacher was " dignified 
without animation," and '' much esteemed for solid 
and judicious instruction." Bishop Jarvis was noted 
for an " unusually slow and deliberate pronuncia- 
tion," a characteristic not suggestive of excessive 
fervor. The amiable Madison '' at all periods of his 
life was much addicted to scientific studies." The 
early style of Bishop Griswold, "like that which 
generally prevailed in the church at the time, was 
rather moral than evangelical." Though the church 
derived its ecclesiastical legitimacy from England, 
and made the Anghcan Church so far as possible 
its model, yet the altered conditions of society ne- 
cessitated some not unimportant changes. Though 
the American bishops retained the name and eccle- 



248 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

siastical functions, they lacked the civil rank and 
ample revenues which conferred so much additional 
lustre on the English prelates ; and the absence of 
patronage threw increased power into the hands of 
the parishes. But the most important constitutional 
change was one carried through by the influence of 
Bishop White, which introduced the novel principle 
of lay representation. In consequence of these mod- 
ifications the " Protestant Episcopal Church " cor- 
responded nearly, if not exactly, with the model 
which Baxter declared would suit himself and the 
more moderate Presbyterians. Nothing could be 
more marked than the mildness with which the 
claims of the new church were asserted. The pop- 
ular prejudice which still lingered against the office 
of bishop, and " the fashion of objecting to it pre- 
vailing even among a considerable proportion " of 
the church, led to a cautious definition of Episcopal 
titles. The Convention of Maryland, in 1783, rec- 
ognized " other Christian churches under the Amer- 
ican Revolution." The Virginia Convention, two 
years later, while expressing a decided preference 
for uniformity in doctrine and worship, declared 
that this should be pursued " with liberality and 
moderation." Where the church, before the Rev- 
olution, had been established by law, its tone was 
uniformly most conciliatory ; where, on the con- 
trary, it had been in opposition, its tone was most 
pronounced. The stanchest Churchmen were in 
Connecticut. When Griswold moved from Connect- 
icut to Rhode Island, sermons which had been 
preached with applause in the former State were 
received with " great disfavor " by Episcopalians in 
Providence and Newport. Coke's friendly overture 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 249 

to Bishop White, proposing a union of the Episco- 
palians with the Methodists, drew from the latter 
the reply " that he did not think the difficulties in- 
superable, provided there was a conciliatory disposi- 
tion on both sides." The first evidence of a change 
of tone was the publication, in 1804, of Hobart's 
" Companion to the Altar," in which not the nature 
of the sacraments, but the " lawful authority " by 
which they might be administered, ' was discussed. 
This provoked the memorable controversy with Dr. 
Mason, in which the distinctive claims of the Epis- 
copal Church were for the first time pubUcly set 
forth. These were further asserted in Hobart's 
"Apology for Apostolic Order," published in 1807. 
The eminent personal qualities of Hobart marked 
him for a party leader, and his elevation to the Epis- 
copate, a little later, proved a signal epoch in the 
history of the church. In a Pastoral Letter of 18 15 
he took strong grounds against cooperation with 
other Christians in promoting religious objects, and, 
in defiance of a growing sentiment represented in 
the formation of the American Bible Society, he 
boldly declared, " That all the differences among 
Christians are on points subordinate and non-essen- 
tial is an unfounded assertion." For a time these 
views found a weighty counterpoise in the Evangel- 
ical party, but, by degrees, what was first described 
as " bold and startling " came to be accepted maxims, 
and by the action of the Convention of 1844 the 
church was placed conclusively upon Hobart's 
ground. And the decided growth of the Episcopal 
Church dates from the period when it clearly enun- 
ciated its distinctive theory. The later controver- 
sies which have disturbed its peace have not touched 



250 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

this principle, and those who differ most widely on 
questions which the Tractarian and Ritualist have 
raised are heartily agreed upon what constitutes the 
" Church of the true Order." 

The tendency so clearly revealed of American 
Christianity to aggregate itself in a few great de- 
nominational families, strenuously affirming theo- 
logical or ecclesiastical tenets that are mutually ex- 
clusive, deserves special attention in its bearing 
upon the prospective development of a truly catholic 
type of Christianity. It might have been supposed 
that the contact, upon a perfectly equal footing, 
of so many Christian bodies, each zealously assert- 
ing its distinctive faith, would have provoked such 
mutual comparison as would gradually have brought 
into clear relief the essential truths which all were 
agreed in recognizing. Professing to receive the 
same gospel, it might have seemed that somewhere 
there must have existed substantial harmony ; but 
no such result has followed. It is amazing to note 
how slight has been the reciprocal influence which 
these bodies have exerted. They seem to have pur- 
sued their separate paths, coming into contact with 
each other's opinions only to controvert them. With 
individuals, of course, changes of opinion have been 
frequent, but so far as concerns the formal affir- 
mations of the leading religious bodies, with the sole 
exception of the Congregationalists, there has not 
been the slightest change. With most of these 
bodies no modification has been thought of ; in one 
or two cases, where the relaxation of some distinct- 
ive denominational feature has been suggested, it 
has drawn forth a storm of indignation. The irre- 
ligious world has laughed at the spectacle of an emi- 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 25 1 

nent philanthropist actually brought to trial on the 
atrocious charge of singing hymns with Christians 
of another name. It is evident that our leading 
religious organizations have done nothing in the 
way of promoting any external Christian unity. 
There are many to whom this state of things is not 
repugnant, who defend the '' denominational " type 
of Christianity as the natural efHorescence of the 
Reformation, and rest content with it as the ulti- 
mate achievement of Protestant Christianity. On 
the other hand, there have been some who have pro- 
tested against '' the * evangelical ' heresy that the 
normal state of the church universal is a state of 
schism." From many quarters have come eloquent 
expressions of the conviction that the sectarian sys- 
tem, however much it may stimulate zeal, does not 
furnish the conditions of the finest and noblest 
Christian culture. But no adequate remedy has thus 
far been proposed, and American Christianity seems 
hopelessly committed to the denominational experi- 
ment. 

This drift of American religious sentiment to- 
wards the formation of compact and powerful relig- 
ious organizations not only affects the relations of 
these bodies to one another, it is already presenting 
novel and difficult problems in relation to the civil 
power. To comprehend fully the most important of 
these, it must be remembered that for many years 
two antagonistic opinions have been developing 
themselves with respect to the functions of political 
society. On the one hand, the maxim has been 
steadily gaining ground that these functions are 
purely secular, and in consequence the formal rela- 
tions between religion and the state have been every- 



252 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

where annulled. But, on the other hand, there has 
been a tendency as marked on the part of the civil 
power to invade the spiritual province, by undertak- 
ing the support and control of education. For it will 
hardly be denied that even in its rudimentary forms 
education touches the springs of spiritual life. Pre- 
cisely at this point the Roman Catholic Church 
emerges into significance as an element in our com- 
plex ecclesiastical equation. 

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church, which 
according to the census now ranks as fourth in order, 
reckoning by number of parishes, but second if church 
property be made the test, has been viewed by some 
with grave apprehension, though, as it would seem, 
on insufficient grounds. This great numerical in- 
crease can be accounted for by our enormous foreign 
emigration. It has been doubted even whether the 
increase has kept pace with the emigration, and 
whether the church has not actually lost in strength 
by the transplanting of so many of its members to 
the New World. There seems to be no way of ar- 
riving at any precise estimate of the Roman Catholic 
population ; but if the ratio of increase has out- 
stripped the aggregate gain of the nation, the same 
would equally hold of the larger Protestant bodies. 
The fact that the members of this communion are 
mostly congregated in great centres gives them an 
exceptional local influence, and exaggerates the pop- 
ular notion of their actual power. Less fettered by 
the civil authority than in any other portion of 
Christendom, they have shown a most intelligent 
appreciation of the possibilities of their position, and 
in zeal for ecclesiastical development have certainly 
been surpassed by none of the Protestant bodies 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 253 

about them. And when we contrast their condition 
at the Revolution, shut out from political functions 
in nearly every colony, and celebrating their atten- 
uated rites in a single city, with their present liberty 
and splendor, it is not surprising that the more en- 
thusiastic among them have learned to look on 
this country as a Land of Promise. By none among 
us has the full significance of our political experi- 
ment been more intelligently grasped than by the 
members of this communion. For many years the 
Roman Catholic Church held itself aloof from Amer- 
ican society. Deriving its increase from a foreign 
element, owing allegiance to a foreign head, caring 
nothing for the controversies that racked the va- 
rious Protestant bodies, its presence was felt only in 
an occasional debate. It urged no exclusive claims. 
The acquisition of territory from Catholic states 
added to its importance, but it was the impulse of 
self-development that first brought it into conflict 
with American society. To insure that development 
nothing was more essential than that the church 
should control the education of its young ; and 
strong at length in consciousness of wealth and 
numbers, it boldly threw down its first gage, in 1840, 
by demanding the removal of the Bible from com- 
mon schools. 

Had this controversy turned simply on the read- 
ing of a few verses of King James's version at the 
opening of the daily exercises, it need have caused 
no intelligent Protestant embarrassment. Simple 
justice would have dictated a concession involving 
neither disrespect to the Almighty nor peril to the 
spiritual welfare of the child. But the difficulty lay 
deeper ; the real grievance of the Catholic was, not 



254 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

that too much, but that too little, religious instruc- 
tion was given in the schools ; he dreaded an educa- 
tion from which all positive rehgious influence had 
been eliminated ; he rejected, in other words, the 
whole theory on which the public-school system had 
been based. The attitude which he assumed fur- 
nishes an interesting illustration of our religious 
changes, since in asserting so emphatically the in- 
dissoluble connection of religion and education he 
occupied precisely the ground of the Puritans of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, who gave the whole 
system of public education in this country its first 
great impulse. With them the spelling-book and 
catechism always went together. Furthermore, in 
the remedy which the Catholic proposed, of propor- 
tioning the annual amount raised for school purposes 
among the various religious bodies, he recalled the 
identical arrangement adopted in Massachusetts to 
meet a similar dilemma in providing for the support, 
by law, of public worship. 

While it is a wholly gratuitous assumption that 
the Catholics in their persistent warfare against 
public schools have been actuated by any covert 
hostility to those political institutions which have 
secured them such unparalleled advantages, espe- 
cially in view of the fact that the most vehenient 
denouncers of the system of mixed education are 
among the most enthusiastic and discriminating ad- 
vocates of our civil polity, it is nevertheless true that 
by the Papal Encyclical of 1864, which brands "the 
system of instructing youth which consists in sepa- 
rating it from the Catholic faith and from the power 
of the church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least 
primarily, the knowledge of natural things and the 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 255 

earthly ends of society alone," as a thing rep7vbatam, 
proscriptain atqtie damnatam, the Roman Catholic 
Church in the United States is irrevocably com- 
mitted to conflict with a part of our public system 
which, by the great majority of our people, is re- 
garded as absolutely essential to the perpetuity of 
our free institutions. This question has been looked 
at so exclusively from a partisan stand-point, and has 
been so overwhelmingly decided by popular opin- 
ion, that its ulterior bearings have hardly received 
enough attention. But a cursory glance will show 
that the problem of the relation of reUgious and polit- 
ical society is less simple than our politicians half a 
century ago supposed. If the popular opinion be 
well grounded, that the temporal and spiritual au- 
thorities occupy two wholly distinct provinces, and 
that to one of these civil government should be ex- 
clusively shut up, — a position in which the disciple 
of Mr. Jefferson and the hberal Catholic who seeks 
to reconcile the doctrines of his church with modern 
liberty are perfectly at one, — it would be difficult to 
make out a logical defense of our present system 
of public education. If, on the contrary, it be the 
right and duty of the state to enforce the support 
of public education from a class of the population 
conscientiously debarred from sharing its advan- 
tages, then our current theory respecting the nature 
and functions of the state stands in need of consid- 
erable revision. 

The theory of the absolute separation of church 
and state has given rise to another question. The 
rapid accumulation of ecclesiastical wealth is a fact 
that could not fail to arrest attention. By the im- 
memorial traditions of all Christian countries, such 



256 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

property has been exempted from taxation. When 
the church was a public institution, and when the 
benefit of its ministrations was freely open to rich 
and poor ahke, a sufficient reason existed for such 
exemption. But, it is argued, the effect of our vol- 
untary system has been to render the modern Prot- 
estant church little more than a religious club, where 
Christians in easy circumstances, by paying an an- 
nual assessment, may listen once a week to reason- 
ably good music, and to such preaching as it pleases 
the Lord to send. The portion of the population 
debarred by pecuniary inability from enjoying this 
soothing Sunday relaxation is not inconsiderable ; a 
still larger number decline to attend for other rea- 
sons. The enormous increase of our public burdens, 
directing as it has, increased attention to the princi- 
ples on which equitable taxation should be adjusted, 
has raised the question whether those who derive 
no benefit from public worship should be indirectly 
taxed for its support. That exemption is such indi- 
rect support, and that so far it tends to throw an 
additional burden upon other property, there needs 
no argument to show. It only differs from direct 
support in furnishing the most liberal assistance to 
those who need it least. And conceding the gen- 
eral benefits that accrue to society from the positive 
institutions of religion, the question still remains, 
Why should a '' purely political organism " give even 
an indirect support to religious worship 1 

The manner in which this subject has been 
handled affords striking evidence of the confused 
and unsettled state of public opinion with reference 
to the relations of the spiritual and temporal power. 
Mr. Brownson claims that neither in politics nor in 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 257 

religion is it the destiny of the United States to re- 
alize any theory whatever. What the future may 
have in store for us it would be beyond the scope 
of this paper to predict, but a review of our past 
history should incline us to place a modest estimate 
on our success. 

** Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth." 

He certainly would be a very bold or a very thought- 
less man who would venture to affirm that the ideal 
of catholic unity has been reached in our system of 
" strenuously competing sects," or that the problem 
of church and state has received a final solution in 
remitting public worship to voluntary support. At 
the close of a century we seem to have made no ad- 
vance whatever in harmonizing the relations of re- 
ligious sects among themselves, or in defining their 
common relation to the civil power. The Evangel- 
ical Alliance was an interesting expression of indi- 
vidual sentiment ; but in proclaiming so energetic- 
ally that the differences of religious sects were non- 
essential, it cut away the limb on which its whole 
fabric rested. 

There are phases of religious culture not touched 
in the foregoing survey which also furnish marked 
and significant tests of religious progress. A cen- 
tury ago the religious culture of this country was 
theological. The intellectual strain was in one di- 
rection, to solve the solemn problems arising from 
man's relations to his Maker. Every thoughtful 
mind was haunted with a sense of the divine order of 
the world ; for, however weakened the social sway of 
Puritanism, it had hardly relaxed its tremendous 
grasp upon the spiritual nature. The system of doc- 
17 



258 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

trine almost universally accepted enforced deliberate 
conclusions respecting mysteries into which angels 
might shrink from looking. To these problems the 
acute and venturesome New England intellect was 
stimulated by the prevailing methods of intellectual 
discipline. At Yale College, a century ago, logic 
held the highest place ; and from the school where 
Burgerdicius, Ramus, Crakenthorp, and Keckerman 
were *' the great lights " came the leaders in the 
most distinctively original and vigorous school of 
American religious thought. Of this school Sam- 
uel Hopkins was the foremost representative. A 
typical New England thinker, a sincere and noble 
character, he deserves the veneration that is never 
withheld from masculine independence and trans- 
parent honesty. The elder New England divines 
were disciples of the Reformation, not of the Re- 
naissance ; they were more concerned for accuracy 
of statement than for polished diction. The quali- 
ties which have caused the Ecclesiastical Polity and 
the Provincial Letters to outlive all controversy, their 
writings did not share. As a consequence, these 
writings have hardly more influence to-day on the 
cultivated intellect of New England than the writ- 
ings of the schoolmen. Their very phrases have 
lost all meaning to the men of this generation. This 
makes it less difficult to do justice to their real 
merit. While the wider culture in our time con- 
demns their intellectual range as narrow, and their 
philosophical method as defective, yet we can never 
mention but with respect a school of thinkers who 
so seriously grasped the great problems of exist- 
ence, and who, withal, dealt so honestly with them- 
selves in the solutions which they attempted ; who 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 259 

may have erred in not accurately measuring the 
limits of human thought, but who neither ignored 
difficulties nor paltered with terms ; who had " no 
sophistry in their mouths, and no masks on their 
faces." 

Whether it be understood as a eulogium or a 
reproach, it is nevertheless a fact that the original 
impulses of religious thought in this country have 
proceeded almost wholly from New England. And 
throughout all our history no more genuine intel- 
lectual force has been expended than was devoted 
to theological discussion by the school that began 
with Hopkins and closed with Taylor. Yet these 
acute and powerful thinkers have had but little in- 
fluence on other religious bodies. With most of 
them they have never come in contact, and where, 
as in one memorable instance, they seemed to effect 
a lodgment it was only at last to be rejected and 
disowned. Nor even in New England have they 
retained their sway. They were profoundly meta- 
physical ; recent theology has become historical and 
critical. It has gained in breadth, but lost in intel- 
lectual force ; it is more learned, but less original. 
A striking illustration of the degree to which the 
theological intellect of New England has lost its 
relish for metaphysical inquiries is furnished in the 
fact that the most acute vindication of the freedom 
of the mind in willing, which our generation has pro- 
duced is the work, not of a divine, but of one who 
snatched from an engrossing business career the op- 
portunities of literary labor.^ 

The second great phase of our religious culture 
was ethical, and it need hardly be added that its 

1 Freedom of Mind in Willing. By Rowland G. Hazard. 



260 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

representative was Charming. In terming the first 
epoch metapliysical it should not be forgotten that 
Hopkins denounced slavery when slaves were still 
landed on the wharves of Newport ; and in terming 
the second ethical we would by no means depre- 
ciate the eminent intellectual qualities of some of 
its early leaders. But it is not less true that when 
the movement, which is so imperfectly described by 
the theological term commonly employed to desig- 
nate it, passed from its negative to its positive stage 
its note was ethical. The inspiration of Channing 
lay in his noble " enthusiasm of humanity." As a 
scientific theologian he cut no deep lines on our 
religious thought ; but as an apostle of that benig- 
nant Gospel which seeks in the welfare of man 
the highest glory .of God he must be reckoned a 
star of the first magnitude in our spiritual firma- 
ment. His true and abiding influence overruns the 
boundaries of sects. He was the foremost and most 
eloquent propagator of that humanitarian sentiment 
which pervades so widely our modern life. The 
force of this sentiment has been by no means ex- 
pended in specific philanthropies and moral reforms. 
While it has made itself felt most decisively in 
these directions, it has also silently reacted in 
quarters where its influence has been least sus- 
pected. The tone of every Christian communion 
has been affected by it. It has widened the range 
of religious effort, modified the emphasis of preach- 
ing, and even tinged perceptibly the impulses of 
missionary zeal. The unmistakable change that has 
come over American Christianity in the disposition 
to assign so much greater relative importance to 
practical well-doing, and to recognize the relations 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 26I 

of the Gospel to the present life, is due, in very 
large measure, to this more open vision of '' the god- 
like in the human." The wider diffusion of this 
humane philosophy has been promoted by an excep- 
tional literary excellence. The qualities in which 
the theological culture of the former epoch was so 
conspicuously deficient became the distinctive char- 
acteristic of the second phase. Still, its success has 
been more evident in the discussion of social ques- 
tions than in solving " problems of the soul." 

The most recent phase of our religious culture, 
and one that can hardly yet be studied in its full de- 
velopment, is the tendency, so marked at the pres- 
ent time among all religious bodies, which assigns 
to sentiment a more prominent function in religion. 
In its most general aspect, this is part of that great 
reaction against a logical apprehension of Christi- 
anity which we have before considered, and is the 
result of social development and of a more diversi- 
fied civilization. It may be termed the aesthetic 
phase, although it should be remembered that this 
tendency even in its most pronounced forms seldom 
usurps exclusive control, being found not unfre- 
quently allied with an efficient recognition of prac- 
tical religious duties. This aesthetical revival is, 
without doubt, the characteristic feature of our re- 
ligious culture at the present day. Were it no more 
than an aesthetical revival it would scarcely deserve 
notice in a review of religious progress ; but in its 
most extreme manifestations it has an avowed con- 
nection with doctrine ; and where no such connec- 
tion consciously exists the tendency can hardly be 
dissociated from subtle modifications of religious 
thought. The illustrations of this present phase of 



262 RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

our religious culture are too familiar to need more 
than the most passing mention. They are seen in 
the general disposition to affect a more elaborate 
reHgious ceremonial, and in the extraordinary im- 
pulse given to ecclesiastical architecture. That 
these results should be witnessed in religious com- 
munions which have always recognized symbolism 
and ceremonial as legitimate instruments of relig- 
ious culture is not surprising, for, even if carried at 
times to an extreme, the development is logical. It 
works out a principle which has never been denied. 
Yet even in these communions the transformation 
is very marked. Things undreamed of even in 
Hobart's time have long ceased to attract attention. 
The first stained windows were brought to this coun- 
try in 1827, and in the same year we find Doane 
urging the restoration of the cross to churches. Not 
till twelve years later did this leader in ecclesiolog- 
ical reform venture to suggest the propriety '' of re- 
moving the holy table back, and setting it up a step 
or two upon the platform." At that day a surpliced 
choir would have excited consternation. But the 
most conclusive evidence of the wide diffusion of this 
sesthetic impulse is furnished in those religious bod- 
ies with all whose traditions it is at war. The ten- 
dency pervades all sects, and mediaeval architecture 
is no longer, as it once was, a matter of principle, 
but simply a question of expense. The Baptist and 
the Methodist have learned to covet the '' dim re- 
ligious light " and the " pealing organ ; " and the 
children of those whose early history was a stern 
protest against the perilous alliance of faith with 
any sensuous forms, and who refused, in their plain 
meeting-houses, to tolerate so much as the stated 



RELIGION IN AMERICA. 263 

reading of the sacred volume, lest a spiritual worship 
should degenerate into a formal service, have come 
to listen with composure, 

" under vaulted roofs 
Of plaster, painted like an Indian squaw," 

to such artistic *' renderings " of Holy Writ as awaken 
a bewildered doubt whether Hebrew, or Greek, or 
Latin be the tongue employed. Whatever the de- 
fects of religious teaching a century ago, it was cer- 
tainly a vigorous intellectual discipline. It is not 
easy to believe that the substitution of such differ- 
ent methods is a sign simply of a more cultivated 
taste. 

From the foregoing review it has been made suf- 
ficiently apparent that the function of American 
Christianity has been discharged in a moral and 
practical rather than in a scientific and theological 
development. The scope of this article does not 
permit a survey of our copious religious literature, 
but such a survey would undoubtedly establish the 
same conclusion. The im^pulse of original religious 
thought was almost wholly limited to a single school. 
As speculative has been succeeded by Biblical and 
historical theology, we have drawn our best supplies 
from a foreign source. Each of our larger denomi- 
nations is amply furnished with its representative 
literature, but no supreme mind has appeared whom 
all acknowledge as master. It may be doubted 
whether denominational training is conducive to 
such a result. Our most successful efforts have lain 
in the more popular discussion of religious truth, a 
direction in which our Hterature has been enriched 
with more than one admirable monograph. At the 
close of the first century of its independent exist- 



264 ■ RELIGION IN AMERICA. 

ence, Christianity in this country, with an undenia- 
ble external growth and a prodigious external activ- 
ity, finds itself confronted with great and perplexing 
problems. Some of these, as the question how, under 
our voluntary system, the Gospel shall be preached 
to the poor, are incidental to the peculiar conditions 
of our American reUgious life ; while others, as the 
issue between Christianity and science, are con- 
nected with the general movement of modern civili- 
zation. There are not wanting many indications of 
a disposition on the part of those who hold earnestly 
to Christianity as a great historical fact to look these 
questions fairly in the face ; but whether, in attempt- 
ing to solve them, we shall simply repeat the experi- 
ments of the Old World, or, rising to nobler modes, 
shall illustrate some deeper adaptation of the Gos- 
pel to human society and to human thought, it re- 
mains for the coming century to show. 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS.^ 

1. Geschichte des Romischcn Rechts im Mittelalter. Von F. C. VON 

Savigny, Zweite Ausgabe. Heidelberg : 1834. 

2. Geschichte der Pddagogik vom Wiederaufbliihen klassischer Studien 

bis auf iinsere Zeit. Von Karl von Raumer, Zweite Auflage. 
Stuttgart : 1854. 

3. The English Universities. From the German of V. A. HuBER. 

London : 1843. 

4. The Reorganization of the University of Oxford. By GoLDWIN 

Smith. London and Oxford : 1868. 

5. Schools and Universities on the Continent. By MATTHEW ARNOLD, 

M. A. London : 1868. 

The question of University Reform, so long con- 
fined to a discussion of the comparative advantage 
of certain studies, has, of late, extended over a much 
wider range, and the general administration of our 
higher academic institutions is attracting more and 
more attention. The efficiency of these institutions 
must depend so largely upon the direction given by 
those intrusted with the supreme control that it can- 
not but be a matter of surprise that the constitution of 
college corporations, instead of being the last, should 
not have been the first, subject of inquiry. As a 
contribution to a more correct understanding of the 
whole matter, we propose to review the historical 
development of these venerable bodies, which, once 
a year, as the season of our annual commencements 
comes round, arouse from sleep, and taste, for a sin- 
gle day, the bliss of resurrection. For they are not 

1 Published in the Baptist QuarUrly, October, 1869. 



266 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

less the legacy of a former age than the mysterious 
parchments which express, in unknown terms, their 
periodic functions. 

An inquiry into the origin of universities directly 
opens one of the most brilliant chapters in modern 
civilization. Mr. Merivale allows himself to speak, 
in his '' History of the Empire," of the two great 
universities of Alexandria and Athens, but the term 
cannot be accurately applied to any of the ancient 
schools. Universities sprang out of wants which 
ancient society never felt, and were quickened with 
a motion and a spirit of which it never dreamed. 
The Theodosian code abounds in regulations re- 
specting education, yet affords no trace of the ex- 
istence of any such great corporate centres of intel- 
lectual life as we encounter at a later period. After 
the dissolution of the Western Empire, instruction 
gradually ceased to be a concern of lay society, and 
sought the fostering shelter of the Church. From 
the fourth to the twelfth centuries, ttie only schools 
in Europe that deserved the name were connected 
with the monasteries. At that of Saint Medard, four 
hundred students were gathered in the sixth cen- 
tury. The vast schemes of social reconstruction that 
engaged the capacious intellect of Charlemagne as- 
signed to education a conspicuous place ; but the 
Austrasian Caesar was before his time, and his fa- 
mous palace-school proved a premature experiment. 

Not till the Feudal System had taken effectual 
possession of Western Europe did that remarkable 
intellectual tendency develop, which, under various 
forms, has been perpetuated to the present day. It 
is in the twelfth century that we must place the 
proper beginning of universities, a movement in 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 26/ 

which all Catholic and Feudal Europe shared. For 
it is now well understood that the true initial point 
in the intellectual regeneration of the European 
mind must be sought, not in the glittering Italian 
Renaissance of the fifteenth century, when Gre- 
cian art and letters were revived, under the benig- 
nant auspices of the Medici, but in an earlier move- 
ment, within the limits of the proper Middle Age. 
Of this great awakening, the rise of Modern Lan- 
guages, the rise of Gothic Architecture, and the 
rise of Universities are the three illustrious mon- 
uments. While, therefore, the secondary schools 
of Europe have a long history, joining on, as they 
do, to the traditions of Roman culture, the univer- 
sities, like the free towns, must be regarded as the 
product of the mediaeval period. And that singularly 
sympathetic social state which, during this period, 
sprung from the mixed influence of Latin Chris- 
tianity and the feudal spirit, and which made West- 
ern Europe, in effect, one community, explains their 
rapid increase and their striking internal correspond- 
ence. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries 
they exercised a continuous and controlling influ- 
ence on the intellectual, the religious, the political, 
development of the leading European states. For 
they were not simply schools of instruction for the 
young ; they were far more teeming centres of 
thought and study, where leading minds from every 
nation were drawn into eager and stimulating con- 
flict. It is not too much to affirm that they led the 
way in all the great movements by which Western 
Europe emerged from the Middle Age. Whether 
we consider the momentous revolution in modes of 
apprehending truth, betokened by the scholastic 



268 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

philosophy, that system so aptly named by Frederic 
Schlegel the Rationalism of the Mediaeval Church ; 
or the change in ecclesiastical theories represented 
by Gerson in the successive councils of Pisa and 
Constance ; or, what was not less far-reaching in its 
results, the essential modification of feudal monarchy, 
effected by the maxims of Roman jurisprudence, we 
are equally confronted with the everywhere-opera- 
tive influence of the great mediaeval universities. 
They furnished Philip the Fair the cruel weapons 
with which he carried through his relentless perse- 
cution of the Templars ; they undermined, with sub- 
tle dialectics, the mighty structure which Hildebrand 
and Innocent had built ; they wrested the mind of 
Europe from its perilous subjection to tradition, and 
kindled the torch destined one day to be seized by 
Bacon and Descartes. 

The influence of universities, however various the 
direction which from time to time it followed, was 
everywhere essentially the same. For they every- 
where presupposed the same spirit of intellectual 
independence which they everywhere most power- 
fully aided to develop. They were arenas for the 
unrestricted interchange of the foremost scientific 
and philosophic thought which the age afforded. 
At a time when the art of printing was unknown, 
and when the oral communication of ideas was the 
most effectual, they rendered a service to society 
which finds its most perfect analogy in the free 
press of modern times. This prime characteristic 
of unhampered intellectual freedom was the secret 
of their living power. They were fields on which 
the master spirits of the age were matched against 
each other ; not so much like modern schools as like 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 269 

modern reviews and essays. They were sought by 
men of more mature development than those to 
whom the designation, student, is now restricted ; 
a circumstance which helps to explain some of their 
most striking internal features, and renders credible 
the statements respecting the great numbers who 
frequented them. Thus it is stated that, in the 
fourteenth century, the university and those de- 
pending on it made a third part of the population 
of the French capital. When, on one occasion, the 
whole body went in procession to St. Denis, one end 
had reached the door of the cathedral before the 
other had passed the city gate. The crowds at Ox- 
ford and Bologna were hardly less. And, making 
every allowance for exaggeration, we can well un- 
derstand how such great multitudes should have 
been drawn together when we bear in mind that life 
at the university was not, as with us, the brief pre- 
lude to a wholly different career, but afforded the 
very widest circle of aspiration and achievement. 

The oldest universities were not foundations, in 
our sense ; that is, they were not originally estab- 
lished by any formal act, but arose gradually from 
the voluntary impulse of students to gather about 
some inspiring teacher. He received neither ap- 
pointment nor support from any authority above 
him. His sole claim on the attention of his hearers 
rested on his eminence over them. Such were Ir- 
nerius and Gratian at Bologna, and William of 
Champeaux and Abelard at Paris. All these had 
taught before any legal incorporation of universi- 
ties had taken place. 

At nearly the same time, that is, during the first 
half of the twelfth century, three schools, in three 



270 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

different cities, became illustrious in three different 
departments : Salerno for medicine, Bologna for civil 
law, and Paris for theology. The first of these, al- 
though the most ancient of the three, may be dis- 
missed from any further mention, not only for the 
reason that very little has been preserved respect- 
ing its early history, but also because its influence 
upon the growth of later schools is imperceptible. 
But Bologna and Paris require particular examina- 
tion, for they were the most illustrious and influen- 
tial universities of the Middle Age, and furnished 
the models after which all subsequent institutions 
were arranged. In the organization of these two 
there existed, from the outset, a striking difference. 
At Bologna the whole body of students formed the 
corporation, choosing from their own number the 
governing body, to which the instructors were sub- 
jected. At Paris, on the contrary, the professors 
formed the corporation, the students having no 
share in university administration. Bologna became 
the pattern for all the universities that sprang up 
in Italy and Spain and France, while Paris fur- 
nished the model to Germany and England. That 
the French universities should have looked not to 
Paris, but to Bologna, was due to the fact that they 
were designed chiefly for the study of Roman law. 
The difference between Paris and Bologna was the 
result in part of the'republican spirit of the Italian 
city, and in part of the different nature of the 
studies. For the study of theology disposed the 
mind to a spirit of subjection to authority, more es- 
pecially as so many of the students had received 
their early training in the cathedral schools. 

We may take, therefore, these two universities as 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 2/1 

models of the whole system which prevailed through- 
out Western Europe, although it should be borne in 
mind that they were not exactly copied, but, both in 
Germany and in England, received essential modifi- 
cations. In Germany, especially, was this the case 
after the Reformation, when the universities adapted 
themselves with great freedom to the new wants of 
the time. The Reformation marks, in fact, the di- 
viding line between the mediaeval and the modern 
systems. 

The enthusiasm of Italian antiquaries has traced 
the University of Bologna to the reign of Theodo- 
sius the Second. But, leaving the domain of fable, 
it is sufficient reason for not fixing the origin of the 
institution with chronological exactness that it dates 
from no formal authorization. The fame of a great 
teacher and the eagerness of students established 
at Bologna a school of civil law long before any cor- 
poration had been created. The university was rec- 
ognized, rather than established, by successive im- 
perial edicts. The first of these was the " Privi- 
lege " of Frederic Barbarossa, published at the Diet 
of Roncaglia, November, 1158. Although there is 
no mention in it of Bologna, yet there was no other 
city to which it could apply. It had a two-fold oper- 
ation. In the first place, foreign students were put 
under special protection of the laws. They could 
travel without restraint ; any injury done them was 
punished with unusual severity ; none of them could 
be called to account for the misdemeanors or debts 
of their countrymen. In the second place, if ac- 
cused of crime, they had the choice of being tried 
by their teachers or the bishop. Thus the foreign 
students were rendered, in great measure, indepen- 



272 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

dent of the municipal authorities. It is perfectly 
clear, therefore, that while this " Privilege " of Fred- 
eric conferred great immunities, it was not, in any 
proper sense, a charter. There is no mention of 
rector or university, for the reason that none as yet 
existed. Nor was the act limited to Bologna only ; 
it included any university and any students that 
might afterwards exist in Lombardy. The whole 
transaction strikingly illustrates the manner in which 
the oldest European universities gradually grew up. 
It is impossible to study it without being reminded 
of the similar manner in which the most vigorous 
of the free cities came into being ; not by any formal 
charters of incorporation, but winning their liberties 
through successive concessions of feudal lords. The 
universities were products of a movement like that 
from which the communes sprang ; only in the one 
case it had its origin chiefly in intellectual, in the 
other in social and material, causes. In the case, 
however, of the Bologna University, these intellect- 
ual and social and material causes were very cu- 
riously blended. 

To comprehend the causes of this intermixture 
we must bear in mind that the extraordinary de- 
velopment of the study of Roman jurisprudence, 
which was seen in the Italian cities during the 
twelfth century, and which gave Bologna its emi- 
nence as a place of study, was not the result of ac- 
cident. The story, so long repeated, of the dis- 
covery of the Pandects at Amalfi, has been long 
exploded. Both the authorities relied upon to prove 
it are at least two centuries later than the occur- 
rence they attest, and both come to us in a shape 
exposing them to great suspicion. The older and 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 273 

more trustworthy chronicles make no mention of the 
incident. According to another, though somewhat 
later, statement, the famous manuscript had been in 
Pisa since the time of the Emperor Justinian. 
Either account must be ranked with the innumera- 
ble fables with which local patriotism labored to 
adorn the annals of each petty Italian state. The 
great revival of the civil law was due, not to any 
accident, but to a social and pohtical necessity. 
Leaving aside the disputed question, on which Sa- 
vigny and Carl Hegel are so much at variance, 
whether the old Roman municipalities were pre- 
served in Italy from the fifth to the twelfth centu- 
ries, there is no ground whatever for supposing that 
a knowledge of the codes had ever perished. And 
when, during the contests between the popes and 
the Hohenstauffen princes, the Italian cities sud- 
denly sprang into new importance, experiencing, 
from their peculiar character as great commercial 
centres, a variety of novel wants for which the feu- 
dal legislation made no provision, the Justinian code 
supplied precisely what was needed. The study of 
Roman law was not a mere literary or antiquarian 
diversion ; it met a great public want. The peculiar 
situation of the Lombard cities, their invigorated 
civic spirit, the unaccustomed and manifold relations 
created by their commercial enterprise, the enhanced 
value imparted to personal, in distinction from real, 
property, the endless and intricate questions con- 
nected with commercial law, were the true reasons 
why the refined system of the Roman code was sub- 
stituted for the rude process of the feudal tribunals. 
This circumstance has an important bearing as show- 
ing how universities, instead of holding themselves 
18 



274 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

aioof from the tendencies of society about them, 
were, in reality, created by these very tendencies. 
Never was there a more striking instance of an at- 
tempt to apply science to the practical concerns of 
life than was seen in the lectures of Irnerius at Bo- 
logna, and never was an institution in more hearty 
sympathy with the leading movements of the time. 

The internal constitution of the university with 
which we are now especially concerned was of gradual 
formation, having for its basis a series of statutes 
finally confirmed by Innocent the Fourth in 1253. 
In accordance with a somewhat singular provision, 
these statutes were revised and corrected every 
twenty years by eight scholars appointed for that 
purpose. The slow development of the system is 
seen in the fact that it is not till near the close of 
the twelfth century that we find any mention of the 
rector, the official head of the university. The ju- 
risdiction of this officer was very extensive, and en- 
tailed endless disputes with the municipal authori- 
ties, who sought in vain to establish a control over 
him. His powers were finally confirmed by a papal 
edict of the year 1224. After this time the students, 
singularly enough, were amenable to four jurisdic- 
tions. The first was the ordinary local ; the second, 
special, resting on the Roman theory of a corpora- 
tion ; the remaining two were based on the '' Priv- 
ilege," granted by Frederic Barbarossa. These four 
jurisdictions were exercised respectively by the city, 
the rector, the bishop, and the professors. The in- 
evitable confusion arising from this conflict of au- 
thority was, more than once, the means of bringing 
the university to the verge of ruin. For the most 
part, however, these disputes confirmed and ex- 
tended its immunities. 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 275 

It should be carefully borne in mind that, at the 
outset, Bologna was simply a law school ; for the 
term " Universitas " did not, by any means, as is 
commonly supposed, imply a seat of learning in 
which the four faculties of arts, theology, law, and 
medicine existed. Still less was it used in the Eng- 
lish acceptation of a federal union of many separate 
colleges. Bologna bore the name of university for 
two centuries before any provision had been made 
for the study of theology, and at Paris the Roman 
law was not introduced until the year 1679. In the 
same way, Salerno and Montpelier, for a long time, 
contained only the faculty of medicine. In the tech- 
nical language of the codes, the word " Universitas " 
included both things and persons. In the latter 
sense, it denoted a plurahty of persons associated, 
by law, for a common purpose ; in other words, a 
corporation. Thus, at Rome, any trade associa- 
tion was termed a university ; and, in ecclesiastical 
phrase, the canons of a cathedral were sometimes 
designated by the same title. When applied to those 
associated in learned studies, it was originally qual- 
ified by the words '* magistrorum et scholarium ; " 
but in the fourteenth century these were dropped, 
and the designation '' Universitas " by common con- 
ijent applied only to the higher schools of learning. 

Owing to the enormous throng of students, 
amounting in the early part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, to ten thousand, the law school of Bologna was 
divided into two sections, according as the students 
were from Italy or from beyond the Alps, and to 
both these bodies, the citramontanes and the ultra- 
montanes, the term university was equally applied. 
In 13 16, after a long struggle, medicine and philos- 



'2.'j6 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

ophy were created into a distinct faculty ; and 
finally, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, a 
theological school was established by Innocent VL 
This latter was copied from the Parisian model, and 
was therefore a Universitas niagistroj'iimy not scho- 
larium. From this time, Bologna really included 
four universities : two of civil law, one of medicine 
and philosophy, and one of theology. Ultimately, 
the two schools of law were combined in one. 

If now we examine this university of law as a cor- 
poration, we find that it was composed of three dis- 
tinct classes, enjoying three distinct kinds of aca- 
demic rights. Full academic rights were accorded 
only to the foreign students, and these, when con- 
vened by the rector, constituted the proper corpo- 
ration. The students who were natives of Bologna 
could neither vote in this assembly, nor be elected 
to any academic office. This distinction had its 
origin partly in the special immunities accorded to 
foreign students by the " Privilege " of Frederic, 
and partly in the legal relation of the native stu- 
dents to the municipality. The university feared 
that its independence might be compromised by 
intrusting any jurisdiction to these students. The 
professors held a wholly subordinate position. Not 
only at their first appointment, but every succeed- 
ing year, they were required to swear obedience to 
the rector and the students. For any disobedi- 
ence they were liable to punishment by fine, or to 
be deprived of the right to teach. They could not 
go on a journey without permission of the rector, 
nor be absent more than a week except by consent 
of the whole university. They had no part in the 
university convocation, unless called to fill the oiBije 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 277 

of rector. In all other respects their rights and 
duties were those of ordinary students. 

The two great bodies of law students were further 
divided, in accordance with a custom that became 
universal, into nations ; of which, at first, there were 
no less than thirty-five. The number, however, as 
well as the name of these nations were subject to 
constant changes. The German nation possessed 
special privileges, the students being allowed to take 
an oath, not to the rector of the university, but to 
their own procurators. In addition to these nations, 
there were associations of poor students, deriving 
support from a common fund, which were termed 
Collegia. These charitable foundations, the germs 
of the great collegiate establishments of Oxford and 
Cambridge, never, at Bologna, exercised any impor- 
tant influence. 

The rector was required by statute to be twenty- 
five years old, to be unmarried, and to possess suffi- 
cient pecuniary means to enable him to meet the 
expenses of his dignity. It is a striking evidence 
of the lay influence prevailing at Bologna that no 
member of any religious order could be chosen to 
the office. The rector, whose term of office was 
limited to a single year, was chosen by his immedi- 
ate predecessor, by the counselors or representa- 
tives of the nations, each nation having one, and by 
certain electors appointed by the university at large, 
and selected from the nations in a certain order. 
The rector took precedence not only over bishops 
and archbishops, but over any cardinals who might 
be enrolled as students, — a provision which affords 
another striking illustration of the difference be- 
tween a great mediaeval university, where men of 



2/8 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

all ages were collected, and a modern seat of learn- 
ing. The ordinary jurisdiction of the rector in- 
cluded all members of the university, but was gen- 
erally limited to academic discipline. In more seri- 
ous cases, the municipal authorities acted with him. 
He was also assisted by the counselors of the na- 
tions, who formed an academic senate. The Ger- 
man nation was represented in this body by two 
members, termed procurators. The rights of the 
university were defended in all outside tribunals by 
its Syndic. 

Nothing connected with the history of university 
corporations is more curious and intricate than the 
subject of academical degrees. When these were 
first conferred cannot be ascertained, but they seem 
to have been in use at least from the middle of 
the twelfth century. The title " doctor," literally 
teacher, implied no more than that the person bear- 
ing it had a right to instruct. It seems a most 
reasonable conjecture of Savigny that the degree 
was a device for preventing unauthorized persons 
from claiming the immunities granted by the Em- 
peror Frederic. The rank of doctor was conferred 
by cooptation, and by the sole authority of the re- 
spective faculties, until frequent abuse caused the 
Archdeacon of Bologna to be joined with them. 
Degrees were first granted only in civil law, but 
canon law and medicine soon followed. Candidates 
were examined both in public and in private, and 
for each examination a distinct rank was given. 
For the canon law, siv years' study was demanded ; 
for the civil, eight. The public examination was 
held in the cathedral, where the candidate delivered 
an oration, and received his ring, book, and cap. 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 279 

The students and professors entered and left the 
cathedral in a procession, a custom which most 
of our American colleges retain to the present day. 
It is a notable feature of the Bologna University 
that women were sometimes admitted, both to its 
honors and to its offices. 

The degree of doctor conferred the right to teach 
not only in Bologna, but in all schools of law, wher- 
ever established. Only such as had received it 
could vote on the promotion of a new candidate. 
Connected with the exercise of this right there was 
a peculiar condition. There were five distinct facul- 
ties, or associations, which regulated all promotions 
to the academical degrees. Although these facul- 
ties were termed colleges, they had no connection, 
of any kind, with the eleemosynary foundations be- 
fore mentioned. They were five in number, corre- 
sponding to the faculties of civil and canon law, 
medicine, philosophy, and theology. Admission to 
the College of Jurists was limited to natives of Bo- 
logna, who must also be of Bolognese descent. At 
the head of each college stood a Prior. They had 
a common place of meeting near the cathedral. 

At the beginning there were no foundations for 
the support of teachers, but very early we find them 
receiving compensation. Thus, in the year 1279, 
the students ag'reed to pay a certain lecturer three 
hundred and twenty dollars in gold for reading a 
year on the Digest. In the year 1289, two profes- 
sorships were founded, apparently with the design 
of attaching the professors more closely to the uni- 
versity. The salary was paid by the city, but the 
professors were chosen by the students. The elec- 
tion was only for a year. A beginning having once 



28o UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

been made, the number of endowed chairs constantly 
increased. The schools, or lecture-rooms, during 
the whole of the thirteenth century, were in private 
houses. In the following century public lecture- 
rooms were first provided by the university. The 
relation of teacher and pupil was more exclusive 
than in modern times ; students, for the most part, 
attaching themselves to some single master. Lec- 
tures were divided into ordinary and extraordinary, 
a distinction which has given rise to much debate, 
but which Savigny has proved beyond doubt to have 
had its origin, not in the circumstance that some 
were given in public, and others in private halls ; 
still less in the fact that some were free, and others 
restricted to those students paying a fee ; but in the 
nature of the subject treated. Ordinary books, in 
the phraseology of the civil law, were the Digest 
and the Code ; all others were extraordinary. The 
lectures on the former were given in the morning; 
on the latter, in the afternoon. Ordinary professors 
might lecture in the extraordinary courses, but the 
converse was not permitted. Besides lectures, rep- 
etitions and disputations formed part of the courses 
of instruction. 

The other universities of Italy differed from that 
of Bologna in no essential particular, with the single 
exception of the University of Naples, which, both 
in the circumstances of its founding and in its in- 
ternal administration, formed a marked exception 
to all the rest. For, instead of springing from a 
great social necessity, and receiving its shape from 
the free development of the relation between pupil 
and instructor, it owed its origin and its distinctive 
characteristics to the will of a single man. The 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 28 1 

Emperor Frederic the Second, perhaps the most ex- 
traordinary character in the whole range of the 
Middle Age, who cultivated all liberal arts with the 
same ardor with which he wooed the dark-eyed 
daughters of the East, decided in the year 1224 to 
found, in Naples, a school of all the sciences, and 
on a far more comprehensive plan than had been, 
as yet, anywhere attempted. Since, in his contests 
with the Lombard cities, Frederic had conceived a 
prejudice against all kinds of corporate immunities, 
Naples was allowed neither rector nor university of 
students. The supreme oversight was entrusted to 
the chancellor of the kingdom ; all appointments 
and promotions, as well as the direction of the lec- 
tures, being in his hands. Degrees obtained at 
other universities received no recognition ; for ad- 
mission " ad eundem," new examinations were in 
every case required. Yet, with all this pretension 
to superiority, and with the most strenuous support 
that the government could give, Naples accom- 
plished far less than any of her rivals. Although 
the claim has been put forth, in her behalf, that, in 
the thirteenth century, she was the only proper uni- 
versity in Europe, her. influence was always insig- 
nificant. The genius of an enlightened but arbitrary 
ruler could not supply the place of the free intellect- 
ual impulse which found such full scope in the re- 
publics of Northern Italy. 

If now from Bologna we turn to Paris, the type 
of another class of universities, the model which 
Germany and England copied, we are struck with 
essential differences, — differences which may be ex- 
plained in the circumstances in which each had its 
origin. Bologna grew up in a republic ; her leading 



282 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS, 

function was to expound those legal principles which 
the wants of a free commercial state had clothed 
with new significance. Paris, on the contrary, owed 
all her greatness to theology, and, naturally, assim- 
ilated the temper of the church. She was the great 
Middle Age university ; where Abelard and Peter 
Lombard taught ; where Roger Bacon and Aquinas 
and Dante studied ; to which Henry II. of England 
was willing to refer his memorable dispute with 
Becket ; to which Christendom itself was ready to 
defer in the great schism of the West. " Nos fuimus 
simul in Galandia " was a password among scholars 
throughout Europe, and it was deemed sufficient 
ground for any academic regulation to add the 
words '' quemadmodum in Parisiensi studio." 

While there seems no reason for doubting that, 
for two centuries after the death of Charlemagne, 
Paris was frequented for purposes of study, a reg- 
ular succession of instructors can be deduced only 
from the time of William of Champeaux, who opened 
a school of logic in the year 1109. The oldest doc 
uments relating to Paris as a seat of study are two 
decretals of Pope Alexander III., the earliest of 
which, dated 11 80, was directed against the prac- 
tice of exacting fees for Hcenses to teach. An or- 
dinance of Philip Augustus, of the year 1200, makes 
the first mention of a rector. The division into 
four nations existed as early as 1206. And lastly, 
in a decretal of Innocent III., in the early part of 
the thirteenth century, the title " Universitas " is 
first applied. The papal sanction was indispensable 
for an institution in which theology was the lead- 
ing study. By a decretal of Nicholas IV., near the 
close of the same century, it was ordained that de- 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 283 

grees at the University of Paris should confer sim- 
ilar privileges in every country of Christendom. 

In the constitution of the University of Paris, the 
first thing to be remarked is, that from the begin- 
ning there was only a single body, so that we find 
nothing of the distinction between independent cor- 
porations existing in Bologna. A second point of 
difference was that the administration was wholly in 
the hands of the instructors, the students enjoying 
no participation. To the general governing assem- 
bly belonged, originally, all who had received the 
degree of doctor or of master, and these, for a long 
time, were identical with the actual teachers. When, 
however, it gradually became the custom for many 
to take a degree who did not intend to teach, the 
right to sit in the university assembly was restricted, 
as a rule, to those performing the duty of instruc- 
tion. In this peculiarity of her constitution lay the 
chief ground of the great influence which Paris ex- 
ercised. For while the Italian universities made it 
their chief aim to secure the freedom of the stu- 
dents and to call eminent professors, the University 
of Paris took part in great theological controver- 
sies, pronouncing her opinion as one organic body. 
This thorough academic unity, which could never 
have existed had the whole body of her students 
taken part in her deliberations, enabled her at times 
to fling a tremendous weight into the scale of 
European authority. Her influence was direct and 
undivided. 

From a very early period the students were divided 
into four nations, the French, the English, the 
Picard, and the Norman ; and these, in turn, were 
subdivided into a multitude of provinces. Thus, 



284 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

the English nation embraced, besides England and 
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Northern king- 
doms. In these nations the professors and students 
were alike reckoned, without any distinction of 
special faculties. But in the middle of the thir- 
teenth century the university became involved in a 
bitter strife with the new mendicant orders, and as 
a result, the doctors of theology were erected into 
a distinct body. The doctors of canon law and 
medicine soon followed the example. From this 
time the university was made up of seven distinct 
bodies : the four nations and the three faculties. 
The faculties were governed by their deans, the 
nations by their procurators. The four nations 
were, in fact, the university, and with them the 
choice of rector rested. So, also, the students and 
bachelors of all the faculties were considered as be- 
longing to the nations, the faculties being made up 
of doctors only. In the course of time this rela- 
tion was much modified, and the four nations came 
to be reckoned together as a fourth faculty, that of 
arts. But they still retained the original control 
over the election of the rector. 

In the internal organization of the Paris Uni- 
versity the colleges deserve particular attention. 
These were at the outset, as in Italy, mere founda- 
tions for the support of the poorer class of students ; 
but, by degrees, they were greatly multiplied, be- 
coming not simply foundations for the poor, but 
boarding-houses for the rich, so that at last it was 
the exception to live out of college, such students 
being known as martinets. As these were less 
amenable to discipline than college students, the 
legislation of the university was turned especially 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 285 

against them. The oldest and most famous of these 
colleges, the Sorbonne, was founded in 1250. These 
differed wholly from the English colleges in being 
appropriated, for the most part, to single faculties. 
Thus, the theological faculty was collected at the 
Sorbonne. Regent masters were nominated, by the 
several faculties, to lecture in the colleges, and, in 
the course of the fifteenth century, instruction in 
the colleges came almost wholly to supersede the 
university lectures given in the public schools. 

The head of the university, as in the Italian uni- 
versities, was the rector, who must be single, and 
held his office at first for four weeks, but after the 
year 1279 for three months. He was chosen by 
electors named for that purpose by the four nations. 
The rector, with the four procurators, constituted 
the ordinary government of the university. He was 
only eligible from the faculty of arts. 

The fact that the university was situated partly 
within the diocese of Paris, and partly within the 
abbey jurisdiction of St. Genevieve, was the occa- 
sion of an important modification in the manner of 
conferring degrees. For it had always been the 
prerogative of a bishop to grant licenses to teach 
within his diocese, and the same power was claimed 
by abbots within their territories. The exercise of 
this power was usually delegated by the bishop or 
abbot to his chancellor. Hence it followed, at Paris, 
that promotions to all degrees must be made with 
the concurrence of these officers ; the chancellor of 
the church of St. Genevieve being the chancellor of 
the faculty of arts, and the chancellor of the diocese 
of Paris of the remaining three faculties, and there- 
fore considered, in general, chancellor of the univer- 



286 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

sity. But while the chancellors regulated the con- 
ferring of degrees, they had no power whatever to 
interfere in other departments of administration. 

In the middle of the twelfth century there arose 
among universities a violent prejudice against the 
study of the civil law. In councils held during that 
century the study was repeatedly interdicted to 
monks, a prohibition extended, in the next century, 
to the whole body of the clergy. From this preju- 
dice arose the remarkable decretal of Honorius III. in 
1220, by which all lectures on Roman law were for- 
bidden in Paris and its immediate neighborhood. 
Theology and arts were the glory of the univer- 
sity. 

The time when academical degrees were first con- 
ferred at Paris is uncertain. According to some 
they were coeval with the university, while others 
hold that they were borrowed from Bologna. The 
earliest degrees were those in arts. In the middle 
of the fifteenth century the course of study requisite 
for obtaining the degree of bachelor of arts covered 
three years and a half. The candidate was next 
required to devote an equal period to the study of 
philosophy, and, if he passed his examination, re- 
ceived a license to teach the seven liberal arts. The 
seven arts were the Trivium, including grammar, 
rhetoric, and dialectic ; and the Quadrivium, includ- 
ing arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. 
"This," says Matthew Arnold, "was the liberal ed- 
ucation of the Middle Age, and it came direct from 
the schools of ancient Rome." To obtain the de- 
gree of doctor of divinity the candidate must have 
studied philosophy for seven, or if he belonged to 
a religious body for six, years. An additional pro- 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 28/ 

bation of nine years was then required, so that the 
student must have been at least sixteen years con- 
nected with the university. Salaried professors 
were not known at Paris until the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The university, as a corporation, was always 
poor, never possessing any public buildings of its 
own ; but schools were provided for the several fac- 
ulties, and the endowments of some of the colleges 
were very large. 

With the sole exception of the restriction relative 
to the study of the civil law, the University of 
Paris was a centre of the freest intellectual activity. 
Like her sister of Bologna she owed her vast influ- 
ence to her vital sympathy with the movements of 
the age. Her glory culminated in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries. When, in the fifteenth 
century, she became false to her own traditions, and 
refused to assimilate the new studies of the Renais- 
sance, she rapidly fell from her proud position at 
the head of European culture. The splendid foun- 
dation of Francis the First, the only institution 
that kept pace with the progress of the sciences, 
was not connected with the university. 

In the first half of the sixteenth century, the focus 
of free thought in Europe was the newly-founded 
University of Wittenberg. Since, however, the 
German universities, so far as their organization 
was concerned, were copies of that of Paris, they 
require no special explanation. The only important 
difference consisted in the fact that in Germany 
the college system never attained any development. 
In all the older universities there existed Bursas ; 
but these were simply funds for the support of poorer 
students. There was no provision made for common 
residence. 



288 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

The two great universities of England, whatever 
may have been their origin, unquestionably derived 
from Paris the model of their corporate organization. 
During all their early history, this similarity con- 
tinued very striking. Thus, at Oxford, the students 
were lodged in private houses, as at Paris and Bo- 
logna ; and the business of instruction, instead of 
being confided to an exclusive body, was shared by 
the graduates at large. The division into nations 
also continued for a time, but fell into disuse on ac- 
count of the small proportion of foreign students. 
A reminder of this original division is still preserved 
in the two proctors. The degrees and the condi- 
tions of bestowing them were also similar to those 
of Paris. The earliest application of the term " Uni- 
versitas " to Oxford was in 1201, earlier than any 
instance where it is known to have been applied to 
Paris. The first formal charter of privileges was 
granted to Oxford in 1224, and to Cambridge in 
1 291, although legal instruments recognizing the 
existence of the universities are found of an earlier 
date. Both Oxford and Cambridge obtained a con- 
firmation of their privileges from the Holy See. 

Since Oxford stood, originally, within the diocese 
of Lincoln, the bishop, as in the case of Paris, claimed 
the right to interfere in university affairs ; but, in 
the reign of Edward First, a violent dispute arose, 
which resulted in the entire emancipation of the 
university from episcopal jurisdiction. A similar 
dispute between Cambridge and the Bishop of Ely 
led, although at a somewhat later period, to the same 
result. 

The more pronounced ecclesiastical character of 
the English universities is shown in the absence of 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 289 

a rector, an officer who, on the Continent, was the 
embodiment of the civil or lay influence. The head 
both of Oxford and of Cambridge was the chancel- 
lor, a dignitary elected by the general body of grad- 
uates, but requiring the confirmation of the bishop. 
The office was held for a short period, and was al- 
ways conferred on a resident ecclesiastic. The uni- 
versities were accustomed, at the beginning of each 
new reign, to solicit a confirmation of their privi- 
leges. By the act of the thirteenth Elizabeth, all 
charters, liberties, and privileges granted to both 
universities were expressly confirmed, and their le- 
gal constitution settled. The two institutions were 
known to law as '' The Chancellor, Masters, and 
Scholars of the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge." 

Meantime, an internal revolution had been grad- 
ually accomplished, which was destined not only to 
subvert the constitution of the universities, but to 
change entirely the methods of instruction. This 
was the extraordinary development of the collegiate 
system, to which the Continental universities pre- 
sent nothing parallel. The colleges of Paris were, 
it is true, richly endowed corporations ; but they 
never supplanted, and never aimed to supplant, the 
university. In England, on the contrary, the uni- 
versities came, by degrees, to be mere associations 
of colleges. This remarkable transformation can be 
most clearly traced at Oxford. 

At Oxford, as in the case of Paris, the colleges 
had been originally founded for the support, and 
better discipline, of the poorer class of students. 
In the absence of the control supplied by the far 
more efficient organization of the nations at Paris 
19 



290 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

and Bologna, the need of some such arrangement 
was more keenly felt. At first, the number of these 
charitable foundations was very small, in comparison 
with the halls where students were simply furnished 
with cheap lodgings. At the beginning of the four- 
teenth century, while there were about three hun- 
dred halls, there -were only three colleges. All that 
was needed to establish a hall was that a few stu- 
dents should agree to live together, with some re- 
spectable graduate as their master. Simply the 
sanction of the chancellor was needed to make the 
arrangement binding. The distinction between col- 
leges and halls consisted in the possession, by the 
former, of endowments. On this account, from the 
beginning of the fifteenth century, the colleges in- 
creased, while the halls rapidly diminished ; so that 
at the beginning of the sixteenth, while the number 
of halls had fallen to fifty-five, the number of col- 
leges had increased to twelve. It had now become 
an established rule that all students should be con- 
nected with some hall or college. The colleges, 
which originally had admitted only on the founda- 
tion, now began to receive other students. To com- 
prehend the cause of the rapid increase of the wealth 
and influence of the colleges, it must be remembered 
that each college was a distinct corporation, gov- 
erned by its own laws, and controlling its own funds. 
The college consisted of a head, variously styled 
Provost, Master, Rector, President, Principal, or 
Warden ; a body of Fellows, who usually elected the 
head from their own number ; and a certain number 
of scholars, or students, on the foundation. In 
nearly all the colleges, there were also exhibitioners, 
who received annual stipends, either from the col- 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 29 1 

lege funds or from the endowed schools where they 
had been prepared. Thus, it was inevitable that a 
corporate spirit should be developed. The Fellows 
and students, naturally, came to look upon the in- 
terests of the particular colleges to which they were 
attached as more important than the interests of the 
university. The common and intimate academic 
life could result in nothing else. So that, in the 
course of time, what had been simply a contingent 
and accessory element came to absorb all the rest. 

The gradual subversion of the university was ef- 
fected in two ways. While, in the beginning, the 
general academic administration had been in the 
hands of the regents, under which designation were 
included all who had acquired the right to teach, the 
colleges were now gradually intrusted with exclu- 
sive functions. The university retained the exam- 
inations and the degrees ; but the real work of in- 
struction passed to the colleges, partly, no doubt, in 
consequence, as Professor Goldwin Smith remarks, 
of the decline of the scholastic philosophy, and the 
rise of the classical studies, which the colleges took 
up. By the statutes of Leicester, the heads of 
houses, with the doctors of the three higher facul- 
ties and the two proctors, were constituted a body, 
to which was conceded the prior discussion of all 
measures proposed in convocation ; and, by the sub- 
sequent statutes of Laud, an absolute initiation was 
given to the heads and proctors, thus making the 
heads of the colleges, in fact, the masters of the uni- 
versity. Thus it happened that a form of govern- 
ment, originally elastic and allowing a free develop- 
ment, was exchanged for a system in which local 
and collegiate interests stood always in the way of 



292 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

any comprehensive changes. To make the domin- 
ion of the new powers more complete the two proc- 
tors, who, from the beginning, had been chosen by 
the whole body of the graduates, were now elected, 
in rotation, by the colleges. This final step in the 
administrative revolution converted what had been 
a great university into a mere aggregation of private 
corporations. It sufficiently explains the intellect- 
ual torpor which prevailed at Oxford for the two 
centuries following, — a torpor in such shameful con- 
trast with her early history. 

For, by these changes, the university instruction, 
although not formally abolished, was yet completely 
paralyzed. The whole influence of the heads of 
houses was thrown in favor of the college tutors, 
to the exclusion of the university professors. At- 
tendance on the university lectures, except as a 
mere form, was not required, even for university 
degrees. The stimulating influence of great minds, 
in eager contact with new truth, was thus wholly 
lost. The right of teaching, once belonging to 
all graduates, was restricted to a single class. The 
public universities became private schools. And 
since, in consequence of the mediaeval statutes with 
which most of the colleges were saddled, all gradu- 
ates, save those of one profession, were excluded 
from position, it followed that all studies not con- 
nected with that profession were neglected. The 
once famous faculties of law and medicine found a 
refuge at the inns of court and the London hospi- 
tals. Even theology, under the depressing influence 
that prevailed, lost all genuine scientific impulse. 
The two great English universities became univer- 
sities only in name. 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 293 

It is a most significant circumstance, in the his- 
tory of higher education in this country, that just 
at the crisis when the great revolution in the Eng- 
lish universities was completed the earliest Amer- 
ican colleges came into being. Harvard College, 
with its corporation of seven persons, a President, 
Treasurer, and five Fellows, was simply a copy of 
the model with which all the leading clergy of the 
colony of Massachusetts Bay were well acquainted. 
At a time when the college had supplanted the uni- 
versity, it was, naturally, a college that they essayed 
to plant. Notwithstanding the arguments which 
the late President Quincy advances in his " His- 
tory," there seems no good reason for supposing 
that the term " Fellows," as used in the charter of 
1650, is to be understood in any other sense than 
that familiar to those who used it. By usage, how- 
ever, the title, in the course of time, ceased to be 
limited to resident instructors, and a distinction 
came to be established between resident and non- 
resident Fellows : the former being known as Fel- 
lows of the house ; the latter, as Fellows of the cor- 
poration. This distinction was recognized in the 
year 171 2, when Joseph Stevens was elected Fellow 
of the house. When, however, nine years later, 
Sever and Welstead claimed seats in the corpora- 
tion, on the ground of being engaged in actual in- 
struction, the claim was denied. As soon as the 
distinction between Fellows of the house and Fel- 
lows of the corporation had become thus fixed, the 
general direction of the college passed into the hands 
of a body of non-residents, — a change which led to 
the most important results in the constitutional form 
of all American colleges. In consequence of this 



294 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

change, the original significance of the term " Fel- 
low " has been wholly lost ; for the power of confer- 
ring degrees, the sole distinctive prerogative re- 
tained by the Fellows of an American college, was 
never possessed by the Fellows of an English col- 
lege. In the charter of Brown University, granted 
by the General x'\ssembly of Rhode Island, in 1764, 
the original quality of the Fellows is in some meas- 
ure preserved. They are not only constituted a 
" learned faculty," but are charged with " the in- 
struction and immediate government of the col- 
lege," With a singular disregard of the plain in- 
tent of the charter, this duty of immediate supervision 
has been wholly renounced by the board of Fellows, 
and is understood to be committed to an anomalous 
body, the executive board, made up, indifferently, of 
Fellows and Trustees. 

The origin of this latter body, which, in many of 
our more recently founded colleges, has entirely ab- 
sorbed the functions of the Fellows, was as follows : 
Before the corporation of Harvard College had 
been created, there existed a board of overseers, 
consisting of the governor, deputy-governor, and 
magistrates, together with the teaching elders of the 
six next adjoining towns. These were intrusted 
with the general duty of supervision, which, in Eng- 
land, was exercised by Parliament. But their du- 
ties were simply of supervision, not of direct admin- 
istration. They could only approve or reject the 
propositions of the board of Fellows. This, too, is 
the theory of the functions of the Trustees in the 
charter of Brown University. The Fellows have the 
exclusive right to make and publish all laws and 
statutes for the instruction and government of the 



UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 295 

college ; but these laws are not valid unless ap- 
proved by the Trustees. While, however, at Har- 
vard the rights of the "■ corporation," or, in other 
words, the Fellows, have been carefully preserved 
amid all changes of the overseers, at Brown the 
Fellows have lost their character as a body charged 
with the instruction and immediate government of 
the college, and become, with the single exception 
of granting degrees, merged with the Trustees. In 
many colleges no board of Fellows exists. 

As a result of this extended examination, it ap- 
pears that academic governments have undergone a 
complete transformation. Beginning, in Italy, with 
intrusting to students and graduates the whole 
charge of administration, it ends, in America, with 
excluding graduates from all share in academic gov- 
ernment ; committing the entire authority to a more 
or less numerous body of non-residents, who not 
only need not be graduates of the institution which 
they control, but, in many cases, lack the qualifica- 
tion of a liberal education. Taking for our model 
the English colleges, just at the time when the Eng- 
lish colleges were at their worst, we have preserved, 
even then, but the shell of the system, carefully es- 
chewing all its valuable features. For the Fellows 
of an English college were at least men of culture, 
and were directly concerned in promoting the inter- 
ests of the body with which they were connected. 
The history of higher education in Europe begins 
with universities. The colleges were a later and 
subordinate growth. In this country it has been 
precisely the reverse. We begin with colleges ; and 
are now, at least in the case of Yale and Harvard, 
endeavoring to engraft universities upon them. But, 



296 UNIVERSITY CORPORATIONS. 

whether it be our object to have a good college or 
a good university, it is clear that our present corpo- 
rate system stands in need of thorough revision. 
No substantial progress can be hoped for until this 
is done. 



SERMONS. 



THE SON OF man; 



And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter 
ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and de- 
scending upon the Son of Man. — John i. 51. 

In this striking passage, Jesus for the first time 
applies to himself the title of " Son of Man." It 
has here an emphasis more marked because Nathan- 
iel had just addressed him as '^ Son of God." The 
terms would seem to be used antithetically, as in- 
volving correlative ideas, and as needing to be ex- 
plained from their reciprocal relation. Both titles 
are used in the Old Testament as designations of 
the Messiah, yet, clearly, the two are not mere syn- 
onyms. Unless we conceive that the language of 
Scripture is used with unparalleled looseness, we 
must regard the terms as designed to describe the 
Messiah in two distinct and peculiar aspects of his 
nature. 

The phrase, Son of God, v/hich Nathaniel em- 
ployed was the one in most common use among 
the Jews, as it best embodied the Jewish conception 
of the Messiah's dignity. That " Son of Man " was 
not a familiar title of the Messiah may be gathered 
from the fact that when Jesus, on one occasion, re- 
ferred to his own approaching death as Son of Man, 
the Jews, in seeming doubt whether He spoke of the 

1 Written in 1861. 



300 THE SON OF MAN. 

Messiah in a manner that accorded so little with 
their own expectations, asked, ^' Who is this Son of 
Man ? " Yet this less familiar and perplexing phrase 
is the one under which the Saviour most frequently 
describes himself. He that sowed good seed was 
the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in 
the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted 
up. It was the Son of Man who had not where to 
lay his head ; the Son of Man who had power to for- 
give sins ; the Son of Man who should suffer many 
things ; the Son of Man who should be betrayed ; 
the Son of Man who should rise from the dead, who 
should come again in glory, who should judge the 
world. 

It must have been, therefore, with some special 
meaning that Jesus so continually employed this 
term ; its reiterated and emphatic utterance forbids 
any other supposition. The antithesis between it 
and the title "Son of God " implies clearly a refer- 
ence to Christ's human nature. Yet to say that it 
implies no more than that Christ was a man, to make 
it mean simply ''the mortal" or the "incarnate," 
fails wholly to account for the frequent and peculiar 
use which the Saviour makes of it. The phrase itself 
would seem borrowed from the prophet Daniel, when, 
in visions of the night, he saw one like the Son of 
Man come with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient 
of Days, and dominion and glory were given Him ; 
but just as Jesus gave to the phrase Son of God a 
meaning far more profound than that attached to it 
in current Jewish usage, so to this He gave a sense 
unhinted in prophetic symbols. Accordingly, it can 
only be from his own use of the phrase that we can 
declare his deep consciousness of its significance. 



THE SON OF MAN. 3OI 

In his words to Nathaniel, the obvious meaning of 
our Saviour is that in Him, as Son of Man, human 
nature shall be glorified ; the figure of ascending 
and descending angels implies that its fellowship 
with heavenly powers will in that way be restored. 
When, in another place He says to Nicodemus, " No 
man hath ascended up to heaven but He that came 
down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is 
in heaven," He as clearly teaches that human nature 
in its highest form is capable of dwelling with God ; 
when, again. He declares, *' Except ye eat the flesh 
and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no 
life in you," his words can only mean that man must 
become partaker of his perfected humanity ; and 
when, again. He tells us that to Him all judgment 
has been committed because He is the Son of Man, 
we are forced to the conclusion that his perfected 
humanity will be the standard with which the hu- 
man race will be compared. These illustrations are 
enough to show us the breadth of meaning which 
the phrase included. 

The title could not, therefore, have been employed 
by Christ to express the bald fact that He had a hu- 
man nature ; on many occasions when He used the 
phrase, such expression was uncalled for ; nor could 
those who were with Him day by day, who saw Him 
and heard his voice, have needed such frequent re- 
minding of a fact so obvious. His reiterated, pecul- 
iar indication of this aspect of his nature could have 
sprung only from a consciousness of some deeper 
alliance with humanity. 

We infer that the phrase " Son of Man " desig- 
nates the human nature of Christ in its most com- 
prehensive character ; not the mere human as dis- 



302 THE SON OF MAN. 

tinct from the divine, but Christ in the whole breadth 
of his relations to the race ; as embodying the eter- 
nal archetype of man ; illustrating not simply an in- 
dividual, but a generic being ; manifestation, as much 
of the fullness of man as of the fullness of God ; not 
more an incarnation of divinity than stature of a 
perfect humanity. 

We must believe that Christ's frequent use of the 
title " Son of Man" sprung from this profound con- 
sciousness of a relation to the whole race of Adam. 
Nor need we dread the imputation of borrowing 
from Alexandrian mysticism, when we thus impute 
to Him, who did not shrink from declaring, " Before 
Abraham was, I am," a recognition of his arche- 
typal being. Christ was, by preeminence, the Son 
of Man, as He was that image of the race which had 
dwelt from eternity in the creative mind ; the first- 
born of the whole creation ; that ideal standard, with 
reference to which all things in heaven and on earth 
had been created, whether they be thrones, domin- 
ions, principalities, or powers ; the Word by which 
all things were made, and without which was not 
anything made that was made. Thus, the pattern, 
by which the first Adam was created, in this second 
Adam was restored. In him was summed up and 
once more brought together its manifold perfection. 
As the first man had been of the earth, earthy, so 
this second man was the Lord from heaven. How 
luminous, in the thick mystery that shrouds our lit- 
tle lives, this light of primeval day ! How serene 
and spotless in the noise and jar of life stood this 
Son of Man, in every act giving a silent rebuke to 
men ; Son of Man, yet unrecognized by men ; Son of 
Man, yet rejected of men ; Son of Man, yet redeem- 



THE SON OF MAN. 303 

ing and judging men ! What insight into the actual 
state of men, what mark of their short-coming and 
shame, is set before us in this manifestation of the 
great original ! 

We miss a signal aspect of the Messiah's nature 
when we miss this significance which He claimed 
for himself as Son of Man. The ancients fondly- 
fancied that in each human soul there lingered rem- 
iniscences of an earlier and purer being ; but it is 
not a poet's dream when we behold in Christ the 
intimation of an earlier purpose, looking from the 
marred ruins of many generations to this unblem- 
ished archetype, gazing back from cloudy night to 
the clear and unruffled dawn. In the Son of Man, 
related as He was to the race, the capacities of hu- 
man nature were meant to be set forth ; in Him 
were presented the proportions of a perfected hu- 
manity, the summit level of the years. Gazing back 
upon Him with fullest persuasion of his uncreated 
being, we are still to bear in mind that that being 
was identical with ours ; that even with his eternal 
dwelling in the bosom of the Father was coupled 
this relation to the whole race He was destined to 
redeem. In the Son of Man the dignity of genuine 
manhood was thus vindicated ; the native ore came 
out in contrast with all the base counterfeits that 
had buried it up. The majesty of the inner life, the 
incomparable worth of the spiritual nature, the lus- 
tre of unselfish love, — all these shone forth in con- 
trast with the meanness, the brutality, the slavery 
to sense, into which the human race had fallen. 

Note, in passing, how varied and contrasted this 
affluent completeness of the Son of Man ; how un- 
bending in his integrity, but how ready to forgive ; 



304 THE SON OF MAN. 

how separate from sinners, yet how touched with 
their infirmities ; how profound, yet how simple, in 
his teachings ; his thoughts absorbed in heavenly 
things, angels of God ascending and descending in 
ceaseless ministry upon Him, yet making his abode 
with the friendless and the outcast, not neglecting, 
even when seated by the dusty wayside, to tell a 
wretched woman of the water of life ! How meek, 
but how brave ; how mild, but how manly ! In his 
various completeness how each phase of human na- 
ture, how every type of character, faith, steadfast- 
ness, fidelity, tenderness, obedience, may find some 
congenial feature, marked as He is by such opposite 
excellences, exercising each in due season : now 
driving money-changers from the temple ; now sub- 
mitting himself to be scourged ; now refusing the 
kingdoms of the world ; now crowned in mockery 
with thorns ; led as a lamb to the slaughter, yet 
Lion of the tribe of Judah ! 

With what fullness of meaning, then, is this phrase 
invested ! Nathaniel had hailed Jesus as the Mes- 
siah of the Jews. '* Thou art," he cried, " the Son 
of God, Thou art the King oi Israel!'' But Jesus 
gave him promise of a more open vision ; not of the 
Jew's Messiah, heir of the glories of one race, but 
of the second Adam, the head of the new creation. 
It was not on the Son of David, but on the Son of 
Man, that he should see the angels of God ascend- 
ing and descending. The vision promised to this 
guileless Israelite is the vision of all perfect faith, 
the recognition of the Son of Man in the grand 
scope of his relations to the human race ; as corre- 
sponding in the fullness of his being with the length 
and breadth of our humanity ; as identified with each 



THE SON OF MAN. 305 

one of us in his manifold completeness ; as involv- 
ing in this mystery of his uncreated glory the ideal 
of that stainless manhood, that in the dispensation 
of the fullness of time shall be gathered together in 
Him. 

I. From this view of Christ's relation to the race 
we must infer that our reasonings respecting human 
nature should rest on the Son of Man as their cen- 
tral point. We must recognize Him as the sole his- 
toric expression of human nature in its complete- 
ness. Only through the knowledge of Him can we 
know ourselves. He is the fixed point of depart- 
ure from which every measurement must be made. 
What is essential, what is right, what is desirable in 
man, we have set before us in Christ. 

And what comment on the insufficiency and un- 
trustworthiness of mere human philosophy is afforded 
in the fact, that from all famous inquiries into human 
nature Christ has been omitted } In the systems 
that have long reigned supreme we search in vain 
for an analysis of the character of Jesus. By a 
kind of common consent, the only being who affords 
any adequate insight into the mystery of man, who 
unveils alike the glory, and the shame, is put aside 
as undeserving philosophic study. Of subtle dis- 
sections of human nature in its actual working we 
have enough. Montaigne, Hobbes, Hume, and a 
host of inferior students have explained its intricate 
windings, and sought to fathom its secret depths. 
We have had on the one hand those who would im 
prison human nature in direful fate ; on the other 
those who would absolve it from all recognition of 
superior laws, those who would strip man of his 
spiritual nature, and those who deny him any mate- 



306 THE SON OF MAN. 

rial being. So, too, we have been flooded with pre- 
tentious theories of human progress ; with wide- 
spread inductions respecting human destiny based 
on presumed facts of experience ; with elaborate 
codes of ethics drawn from man's actual conscious- 
ness of moral distinctions ; with plans of reform and 
imagined perfect states, all developed in entire un- 
consciousness of Him in whom alone are any hopes 
of human progress, any hints of human destiny, any 
absolute and indisputable moral intuitions. 

Theology, in part, must be held responsible for 
this, by exalting the Son of Man above that race 
whose nature He expressed, and creating an impass- 
able gulf between Redeemer and redeemed. In her 
zeal to enthrone the Lord of Life above all prin- 
cipality and power, and all that may be named in 
heaven and on earth, faith has been at times forget- 
ful that it was the Son of Man whom the dying 
Stephen saw standing at the right hand of God, and 
whom John beheld in Apocalyptic glory. Recog- 
nizing Christ as the type of unfallen human nature, 
as man originally formed in the image of his Maker, 
we must be pierced with the dismal sense of our 
short-coming ; we must, as the contrast is drawn out 
between himself and us, be appalled at the distance 
we have wandered from our Father's house ; for the 
unstained life of the Son of Man is a sorer judg- 
ment on our actual state than was ever proved by 
the most sober moralist or hissed out in the most 
stinging satire. 

Let us not forget that man's normal nature is seen 
in Christ, and not in us. In our sweeping condem- 
nation of human nature as the world reveals it, let 
us not blind our eyes to the fact that the world but 



THE SON OF MAN. 307 

partially and dimly shows it ; our estimate of human 
nature is sadly incomplete if we omit that Son of 
Man in whom alone it was perfectly displayed. His 
spotless excellence not less truly illustrates man 
than all the sin and misery and guilt we mourn. It 
is this sense of a common nature, of a nature whose 
essential quahties and capabilities no sin, degrada- 
tion, nor long centuries of alienation have rooted 
out, that establishes the sympathy between us and 
the Son of Man. Without this there were for us no 
redemption. Because He is Son of Man is He Sav- 
iour of the world. We may believe that this phrase 
was so often on his lips, because He would have 
men feel that with all their sin He was not ashamed 
to call them brethren. 

In the Son of Man as revelation of man's real 
nature we have illustrated at once man's greatness 
and misery. The perplexing thing in human na- 
ture is that in the same breast are pent up conflict- 
ing tendencies. There is an endless war of im- 
pulses ; a choosing of evil, but an enforced appro- 
bation of the good ; the soul seeking to deceive itself 
in vain ; a sense of better things that overrides all 
flatteries of the heart,, all sophisms of the under- 
standing, attesting the nobler man. " Philosophers," 
says Pascal, " never furnish men with sentiments 
suitable to these two states. They inculcate a no- 
tion either of absolute grandeur or of hopeless deg- 
radation, neither of which is the true condition of 
man. Consider all the great and glorious aspira- 
tions which the sense of so many miseries is not 
able to extinguish, and inquire whether they can pro- 
ceed from any other save a higher nature. Had 
man never fallen he would have enjoyed eternal 



308 THE SON OF MAN, 

truth and happiness ; had man never been otherwise 
than corrupt he would have retained no idea of 
truth or happiness." 

11. Our promise for the future is in the Son of 
Man. As He restored the effaced image, so was He 
the harbinger of our hereafter. For He tenanted his 
fleshly tabernacle not to torment us with the retro- 
spect of an irremediable past, but to introduce the 
new creation. In Him the latent capacities of that 
creation, that was groaning and travailing for re- 
demption, were set forth. As Son of Man, He held 
out to man the hope of partaking in his glorified 
nature. This was the purpose hid in Him from the 
foundation of the world. The Word made flesh, was 
the living corner-stone of the new temple in which 
we are builded together for an habitation of God. 
The Son of Man opened for us the gates of this glo- 
rious and unending race. In Him was the pledge 
of a final completing and glorification of man that 
no fancies of human reform had reached. In his 
manifestation of human nature in its original form, 
was revealed at the same time, the goal towards 
which we tend ; himself the forerunner of his peo- 
ple, his life a prophecy of that perfect man to which 
they should come at last. And it is because the 
Son of Man is that herald and forerunner of a per- 
fected race, because in the very fact of his humanity 
is involved this issue, that it is held up as the aim 
of all true disciples to be fashioned more and more 
like unto his glorious body ; for He was not the sole 
secret of this comprehensive purpose, but the first- 
born among many brethren. If this language be 
not a delusive mockery of our wants, it must imply 
that Christ, the second Adam, foreshadows the new 
creation, at once its head and harbinger. 



THE SON OF MAN. 3O9 

Such was the Son of Man ; with this breadth of 
comprehensive meaning did He wear the title ; him- 
self the central point of man's checkered history, 
the full light illuminating the eternal purpose that 
was heralded by the strains of morning stars, and 
shall be celebrated in its consummation by the song 
of Moses and the Lamb. 

" Our little systems have their day ; 
They have their day and cease to be ; 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

When Pilate led Jesus forth wearing the crown 
of thorns and the purple robe, he cried to the angry 
mob before him : " Behold the Man ! " But in a 
sense far deeper than the Roman governor intended 
they saw the man ; not the despised and hated Naza- 
rene alone, the man of sorrows, who had not where 
to lay his head, but the man, — the man whose un- 
throned and unsceptred manhood shamed the craft 
of priestly spite and cowardice of kingly power. 

Behold, then, the man, not as they saw Him, 
marred, scourged, spit upon, but as He stands re- 
vealed in his real nature ; as He rises in glorified 
majesty over all the accidents of time; as He re- 
bukes with his completeness the hollow, partial, dis- 
torted manhood that received Him not ; as He rules 
more and more the increasing purpose that runs 
through the ages ; as He sits exalted over each loft- 
ier reach of redeemed, regenerated souls, crowned 
in endless adoration as Lord of all. 

Behold the man, you who are emulous of genuine 
manhood; you who prize what is real and essential 
above factitious rank ; you who recognize the worth 
of your spiritual being, and would school it dis- 



3IO THE SON OF MAN. 

creetly for its great hereafter. See in this Son of 
Man the pledge and promise of your destiny, if only, 
like Him, you learn how much greater and nobler it 
is to minister rather than to be ministered unto ; to 
seek not your own glory, but the glory of your 
Father which is in heaven. 

Let the world's heroes go ; they strut their brief 
hour on the stage, and then vanish like a dream, and 
their pomp and circumstance go with them. They 
bring nothing into the world, and 't is certain they 
carry nothing out. The Son of Man made himself 
of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a ser- 
vant, to show how separate from such outward trap- 
pings is the real man ; how little the great ends of 
our earthly being depend on these things that the 
nations of the world seek after. 

I say to you, as Philip to Nathaniel, " Come and 
see." Outwardly the Christian life of self-denial, of 
humiliation, of meek endurance, of secret well-doing, 
of abstinence from worldly aims, of mortified ambi- 
tion, of unappreciated, often misrepresented, merit, 
may seem to have in it little that it should be de- 
sired ; but, unseen by human eye, over such a life 
the heavens are open, and on it angels of God con- 
tinually descend. 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, 
AND THE LIFE} 



Jesus said unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No 
man cometh unto the Father but by me. — John xiv. 6. 

The separate clauses of this suggestive text of 
Scripture, so charged with the consciousness of di- 
vine authority, are not to be taken as mere emphatic 
repetitions of one statement ; they embody distinct 
characteristics of the work of Christ. Thomas had 
said unto Him, " Lord, we know not whither Thou 
goest, and how can we know the way ? " Jesus, as 
was his wont, instead of directly answering the in- 
quiry of his follower, comforts him with a truth 
larger and broader than he had dreamed of. Thomas 
was evidently thinking of some literal way by which 
the Saviour would depart. Jesus endows the word 
with a deep spiritual sense, connecting it at the same 
time with distinct, yet essentially related and coordi- 
nated truths. *' I," said He, " am the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life : " the spiritual Way, by which every 
soul must walk to come to the perfect truth ; the 
Truth, which every soul must believe to attain eternal 
life ; the Life, which every soul must share to know 
the power of faith and the fellowship of the heavenly 
societies. No man cometh to the Father but by this 
threefold experience : threefold, yet one ; essentially 

1 Written in 1867. 



312 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

distinct, yet always combined together ; at once 
practical, logical, experimental ; appealing to every 
side of human nature ; enlisting equally the will, the 
understanding, the affections ; covering the whole 
man, embracing every aspect of his wonderfully 
fashioned structure, fitted to all his wants alike. 
The example to be followed, the doctrine to be ac- 
cepted, the spiritual experience to be tasted, — these 
are the harmonious parts of that complete and per- 
fect discipline which is the inexorable condition of 
attaining unto life eternal. "I," said the Saviour, 
" am all this. No man cometh unto the Father but 
by me." 

I. Christ is the Way. In what precise sense, let 
us ask, does Jesus say this } Nothing at first sight 
could seem simpler than such a figure. The Scrip- 
tures furnish abundant illustration of its use. " The 
Lord," says the Psalmist, " knoweth the way of the 
righteous." " Search me," was his prayer, •' and 
know my heart, and lead me in the way everlasting." 
" The ways of wisdom," says the wise man, '' are 
ways of pleasantness ;" and our Saviour himself, in 
a memorable passage, uses the same figure when 
He contrasts the broad way that leadeth unto death 
with the narrow way that leadeth unto life. Nor is 
there reason to suppose that in the text the word is 
introduced in any distinctive or peculiar sense. In 
all these passages, and in many more that might be 
quoted, the word " way " is a synonym for course of 
conduct. It is this that the Lord knows and searches ; 
it is this that has in it the awful issues of life and 
death. When, therefore, our Lord calls himself 
the Way, it is not his meaning that He has opened 
a way for us, but that the course of conduct which 



CHRIST, THE WAV, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 313 

his life exemplified is to be the example and the 
pattern of our lives. This was his own obvious 
meaning when He said, " If any man will be my dis- 
ciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
and follow me." " My sheep hear my voice and fol- 
low me." '' If any man serve me, let him follow me.'* 
Follow Him, not in the literal sense of tracking 
his steps as He went about from city to village, 
and from village to city, despised, unheeded, re- 
jected, not knowing where to lay his head ; not even 
in the sense of going with Him in sorrowful com- 
panionship to the upper chamber, the garden, the 
judgment hall, the cross. Men might do all this, 
might beat their breasts as they beheld his unutter- 
able anguish, and not be his disciples indeed. They 
alone were his followers in the sense which He 
intended, who shared his spirit ; who were them- 
selves conformed to his image. In this sense the 
great Apostle used the phrase when, counting all 
else but loss that he might know Christ, and the 
power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his 
sufferings, he adds, *' Not as though I had already 
attained, either were already perfect, but I follow 
after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I 
am apprehended of Christ Jesus." 

When, then, we speak of Christ as our perfect 
pattern and example, let it never be forgotten that 
He is all this not in the sense of being simply set 
up for our outward imitation ; we can never, in that 
cold, formal way, come to be like Christ. His living 
impress must be stamped upon the heart ; we must 
be like Him inwardly before we can truly resemble 
Him in his outward life ; we must be buried with 
Him in the spiritual likeness of his death before 



314 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

we can rise and walk with Him in newness of life. 
Thus we see how the distinct truths into which our 
text unfolds are still all connected. Is Christ the 
way } So is He just as much the truth and the life, 
Would we follow Him as our example 1 We cannot 
do so unless in our hearts we believe the truth He 
manifested ; unless in our daily experience we know 
the power of the life He lived. He is our ideal pat- 
tern ; the mark of the prize of our high calUng is 
to be like Him ; our lives can have no higher aim ; 
but we can be conformed to his outward example 
only as we are transformed into his inner and spir- 
itual image. 

They show you in the " quaint old town of toil 
and traffic " forever associated with the genius of 
Albrecht Durer, " Nuremberg the ancient," a series 
of stone pillars, extending from the city gate to the 
old cemetery of St. John, where the ashes of the 
great artist rest. Where the line of pillars ends 
stand three crosses, on which are carved the figures 
of Christ and of his companions in the last agony. 
The distance from the gate to the crosses exactly 
measures the distance which, according to tradition, 
the Redeemer trod on the weary journey when He 
sank beneath his load, — the stone pillars marking 
its successive stages. The whole was the work of a 
pious pilgrim, who made more than one journey to 
the Holy Land to insure the exactness of the meas- 
urements. He did it that he and his fellow-towns- 
men, treading that dolorous way, might know the 
fellowship of the Saviour's sufferings. He knew no 
deeper meaning of conformity to Christ than by such 
outward and literal imitation. 

Now, may we not commit as fatal a mistake 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 315 

when we suffer ourselves to regard Christ as merely 
an example ; when we suppose for a moment that 
by any outward imitation, however painfully exact, 
we can come to be truly like Him ; when we view 
Him as set in the ever-receding frame-work of a 
past age, like an antique marble, with no inner and 
vital relation between Him and us ; when, in short, 
we take Him as our Way, forgetting that He is not 
less our Truth and Life, and that no experience of 
Him can be complete into which all these do not en- 
ter ? Christ is, indeed, our perfect pattern ; but oh, 
the disastrous mistake of accepting Him as simply 
that ! How little does that soul taste the secret 
springs of life that knows no nearer access than this 
to the Son of Man ! Outwardly correct, it may be 
zealously devoted to good deeds, but at best a cold 
and distant walk ; keeping the commandments ; pene- 
trated, perhaps, with awful sense of the sanctity of 
the divine law ; but knowing nothing of that close 
and tender and joyous fellowship when the whole 
law is fulfilled in love ! 

n. Christ is the Truth: and He is this, not in 
the limited and partial meaning simply that He 
spoke the truth. To give this interpretation to his 
sayings would abolish the essential difference be- 
tween Him and human teachers. We miss the force 
of his declaration if we stop with this. He calls 
himself the Truth in that ampler sense in which 
the evangelist describes Him, in this same gospel, 
as the " only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth." He was the manifested truth, the rev- 
elation in human life of the innermost and eternal 
reality of being. He set forth that central truth, 
of which all other truths are only parts and frag- 
ments. 



3l6 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

In the manifestation of truth there are various de- 
grees and stages. The sides and angles of a crys- 
tal are the manifestation of one kind of truth. The 
well-ordered movements of sun and stars are the 
manifestation of another. ''The heavens declare 
the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his 
handiwork." But the manifestation of truth, of char- 
acter, and of life is more excellent than these. They 
all shall perish, but this remains. This expresses 
what no material form can represent ; this is a par- 
taking of the divine nature. In this vital sense did 
Christ call himself the Truth. From the beginning 
of time had truth been embodied in material forms, 
and so far as it was possible had the invisible things 
of God been shadowed forth in the creation of the 
world. " O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! In 
wisdom hast Thou made them all," was the anthem 
that nature had ceaselessly repeated since the morn- 
ing stars began the strain. More impressively had 
it been illustrated in the course of eternal Provi- 
dence, so that, beholding the unmistakable dealings 
of the Almighty, men had been moved to cry out 
that " righteousness and judgment were the habita- 
tion of his throne;" and still more distinctly had 
it been expressed in the symbolic language of the 
temple service, and in the express teaching of 
prophets and holy men ; but these all had been only 
the preparatory stages for that full and perfect reve- 
lation, when the law that was given by Moses faded 
before the grace and truth that came by Jesus 
Christ. " God," says the writer to the Hebrews, 
"who at sundry times and in divers manners spake 
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath 
in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, the 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 317 

brightness of his glory, and the express image of his 
person." 

Christ, then, was the living Truth. Let us keep 
earnestly in mind that this was what was distinctive 
in Him. In this his supreme excellence consisted. 
Not a mere teacher, though He spake as never man 
spake, and men, when they heard Him, wondered at 
the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth. 
Back of his words lay something unuttered and un- 
utterable : the beauty of a sinless character ; the 
grace of a life that was one with the Father ; the 
enticing power of a love whose height and depth 
were measureless. Christ was the living Truth ; 
how vain, then, the attempt by any logical dissec- 
tion of his teachings to fathom his uncreated being! 
How far short fall all definitions of theology, all 
verbal niceties of creeds, of setting forth his tran- 
scendent fullness ! How powerless is any mere effort 
of the intellect to grasp Him ! How pitiable is their 
mistake who dream that they know Christ, because 
they have reasoned themselves into any amount of 
traditional archaism, or have suffered themselves to 
be seduced into any amount of fanciful speculation 
respecting his mysterious nature ! 

That is a most pathetic passage in which a great 
writer of the last generation likens a kindred spirit 
to " a solitary thinker, who in the morning of his day 
found some ancient riddle hewn upon an eternal 
rock. He believes in this riddle, but he strives in 
vain to guess it. He carries it about with him 
the whole day, allures weighty sentiments from it, 
spreads it out into doctrines and images which de- 
light the hearer, and inspire him with nobler wishes 
and hopes. But the interpretation fails ; and in the 



3l8 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

evening he lays him down, with the hope that some 
divine dream or the next awakening will pronounce 
the word of his intense desire." 

Of the experience of how many souls is this a 
picture, — of souls ardent in the pursuit of truth, 
inflamed with high ideals, but who search for the 
abstract instead of following the living Truth ; who 
vainly fancy that they can apprehend the Son of 
Man without coming into a personal fellowship with 
Him, that they can know his doctrine before they 
have been ready to do his will ! Alas, they cannot 
reverse the divine method. They can never com- 
prehend the deep sense in which He calls himself 
the Truth, till in their lives they have found Him 
to be the Way. There can be no genuine belief in 
Christ which does not spring from this vital, experi- 
mental acquaintance with Him. 

I would not seem to undervalue some of the con- 
tributions that have recently been made to our re- 
ligious literature. They furnish eloquent and varied 
delineations of the character of Jesus ; they call to 
mind aspects of his work too much forgotten or over- 
looked ; they illustrate the yearning that men feel to 
solve the mystery hid from ages and generations ; 
they show that the old question is ever fresh and new 
— " What think ye of Christ } " But after all their 
chief value consists in the conviction they arouse 
of their own inadequacy ; in turning the inquiring 
spirit from their own eloquent discussions to the 
simple picture of the gospels ; in stirring within 
the soul such utter sense of the wearisomeness and 
emptiness of human speculation as shall cause it to 
thirst for the springs of living water. To such as 
these does Christ become the Truth ; and as evi- 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 319 

dence of such vital apprehension, better than whole 
chapters of fascinating portraiture, better than whole 
volumes of learned disquisition, is the tender, yearn- 
ing trust that sings, 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly." 

III. Christ is the Life ; and thus is his work in us 
completed. He is the Example to be followed, He 
is the Truth to be believed ; but, more than all this, 
He is the Life to be lived. As we cannot heartily 
surrender ourselves to the contagion of his example 
without being irresistibly persuaded of the truth He 
manifested, so we cannot truly believe in Him with- 
out experiencing the mysterious consciousness that 
it is no longer we that live, but Christ that liveth 
in us. The process is organic and indissoluble. 
Sooner shall seed-time and harvest fail. There is a 
kind of climax here ; for this doctrine of the mani- 
fested life flowing from the vine through all its 
branches, fusing together all generations of believ- 
ing souls in the unity of one common spiritual na- 
ture, is the core of Christianity, — its central, and at 
the same time most transcendent, truth. In noth- 
ing does the Son of Man mark so much his distinc- 
tion from all other men and his eminence over them 
as when He says, ^' For as the Father has life in 
himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life 
in himself." 

The mystery of life ! Everywhere we study it. In 
its lowest and most imperfect forms, how it eludes 
our scrutiny ! Physiologists are forced to the ad- 
mission that it lies back of organization ; that it 
fashions organization and builds it up. In the help- 
less globules of jelly that float in our summer seas, 



320 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

that the child catches in his hand, Hes imprisoned a 
mysterious hfe that works itself out in delicate sea- 
shells, whose lines of grace and tints of beauty no 
art of man can rival. What is that power of life ? 

The inner life has its centre of action, its organic 
law. It is built up, a house not made with hands, 
by the subtle operation of spiritual forces. It must 
conform throughout its fitly framed construction to 
a divine scheme. A vital force lies back of all 
growth of human character, as it lies back of all 
growth of the external world. And as the countless 
lilies of the field confess one common pervading 
vital force, so the leaves of the tree of life, the 
branches of the true vine, are the organic outgrowth 
of one common spiritual principle. 

And this common pervading life is Christ. It 
was in Him in its fullness ; it must be in us if we 
would be like Him. " In Him was life, and the life 
was the light of men." To no part of his teaching 
did the Saviour recur with such emphasis as to this 
central characteristic truth. On nothing did He 
lay such weight as on the principle, repeated in so 
many forms of statement, and enforced with such 
variety of illustration, that identity of spiritual life 
was the distinctive feature of his kingdom. " I," 
said He, " am the bread of life ; " " I am the living 
bread that came down from heaven ;" and the affect- 
ing sacrament of his body and blood, which He 
commanded his followers to observe until his sec- 
ond appearing, was designed not, according to the 
cold and artificial view of some, as a mere memorial 
of his death, but far more as a perpetual and speak- 
ing witness of the great truth that He ever liveth, 
and that all his true disciples live in Him ; eating 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 32 1 

his flesh and drinking his blood in the acknowl- 
edgment of that inner indissoluble union, whereby 
they evermore dwell in Him and He in them ! 

Christ is our Life ; we confess no doctrine more 
comprehensive than this. The power of apostolic 
faith acknowledged no more satisfying mystery. 
Recognizing this pervading oneness of spiritual 
being; St. Paul declared, " The law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law 
of sin and death." It is in his view the character- 
istic mark of our perplexed and changeful Christian 
course, with its doubts and fears and struggles, that 
thus we ourselves, always bearing about in the body 
the dying of the Lord Jesus, make manifest the 
life also of Jesus in our mortal flesh. His epis- 
tles are indeed a kind of running commentary on 
this portion of our text. Without the words of 
Christ the rapt language of the Apostle might ap- 
pear a mystic dream ; without the comment of the 
Apostle the language of our Lord might perplex with 
seeming impossibility ; but when a man, sinful and 
tempted like ourselves, afflrms, *' I am crucified with 
Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave himself for me," we feel con- 
vinced that this far-off ideal is not outside the range 
of our experience. 

The Way, the Truth, and the Life ; Christian ex- 
perience is completed here. The soul of man in its 
endless growth can have nothing that is not con- 
tained in this. To live by the faith of the Son of 
Man, to have our life hid with Christ in God, to share 
the eternal life in which mortality at last shall be 



322 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFn. 

swallowed up, — this is the goal of all effort and of 
all aspiration. Of this Ufe all other life is but the 
evanescent type ; for it all human experience and 
discipline are designed but as the portal and prepara- 
tion. Can we count it strange that the faintest hint 
of this great possibility, the far-off promise of this 
luminous reality, should have led men literally at 
times to give up father and mother, and houses and 
lands, yea, all that they had, that they might attain 
this blissful state ; that, fleeing the temptations and 
follies of the world, in mountain solitudes and in 
monastic cells, they should have sought by prayer, 
by fasting, by tears and stripes, by the ecstasies of 
mystical devotion, to soar to the serener height of 
the new and living way which Christ hath opened ? 
A modern poet, catching the purest strain of me- 
diaeval piety, has not inadequately embodied in his 
verse such mystic breathings : — 

" Deep on the convent roof the snows 
Are sparkling to the moon ; 
My heart to heaven like vapor goes, 
May my soul follow soon ! 
The shadows of the convent towers 
Slant down the snowy sward, 
Still creeping with the creeping hours 
That lead me to my Lord. 
Make Thou my spirit pure and clean, 
As are the frosty skies. 
Or this first snow- drop of the year 
That in my bosom lies." 

Yet such yearning of passionate affection that em- 
braces Christ with almost the warmth of a natural 
love is not, after all, the truest experience of Him 
He is, indeed, the Life ; unless we ourselves know 
Him as such we can never know Him aright ; but 
He is also the Way and the Truth. We rend at our 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 323 

peril the seamless robe. Except we walk in the 
straight and narrow way which He has trod, except 
the truth that came by Him guides and illumines 
and enlarges us, our rapt forms of devotion are only 
an idle dream. 

Who are they that have learned to eat the living 
bread } Not those who have stood gazing up idly 
into heaven ; not those who have forgotten this life 
in selfish aspirations for another. There is in the 
Christian life the element of mystical fervor, the 
seasons of sweet communion, the longing of the soul 
to flee away ; no deep and pure and ardent piety can 
ever wholly lack it ; yet is it always the outgrowth of 
some practical obedience. The winds of heaven may 
blow among the branches, but the roots of the tree 
are set in the solid earth. Never can we be sure, 
then, that Christ is our Life, unless we follow Him 
as the Way, unless we accept Him as the Truth. 
The Christian life in its nature is an in7ier life, but 
not a life without outward tests and conditions. It 
is a spiritual life, yet the office of the Spirit is to 
take of the things of Christ and show them unto 
us. A humble, patient, faithful following of Christ, 
a daily crucifixion for his sake, a bearing of Him 
about in all the common walks of life, an earnest 
study and intelligent comprehension of the truth 
that came by Him, can alone assure us that this life 
we now live in the flesh we live by the faith of the 
Son of God. 

It may be that in the unobtrusive performance of 
daily duty many humble souls live truly by this faith 
who, measured by human standards, have very im- 
perfectly complied with these conditions of our text. 
It may be, even, that some truly follow Christ's ex- 



324 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

ample who do not call upon his name. The church 
has ever cherished a touching legend of one who 
carried the Saviour across a stream, not knowing 
that it was He. And may not this legend have 
been verified in the story of the shipwrecked sailor, 
cast, years ago, upon a desert coast, who, finding 
among his surviving comrades a fair-haired child, 
whose parents had perished in the wreck, led it by 
the hand, and, when the little feet were sore with long 
wading through the burning sand, bore it in his bo- 
som, and, though his own failing strength was over- 
taxed, refused to leave it alone, and at last, when 
both were wasted with burning fever, laid down to 
die beside it } Perhaps, though he knew it not, that 
starving sailor had been eating the bread of life ; it 
may be, though no human voice consoled him, that 
the Lord, whom he had never known in the flesh, 
was saying unto him, '* Inasmuch as thou hast done 
it unto this little child, thou hast done it unto me." 
The Good Shepherd knoweth his sheep, and though 
we hear it not He calleth them by name. 

It has been the case in all ages that some have 
known the truth as it is in Jesus whose conceptions 
of his character and offices were meagre and indis- 
tinct. Such is the unmistakable testimony of Scrip- 
ture itself. For all the fathers, says the Apostle, 
drank of the same spiritual rock of which we drink. 
This faith supplies the inner unity to all Hebrew 
history. This ever-increasing, ever-deepening ex- 
perience of the one spiritual life, that is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever, was the bond that 
held ancient society together. In the accents of the 
dying Jacob, of the cast-down but not despairing 
Job, in the raptures of Isaiah, in the vision of the 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 325 

Son of Man that Daniel saw, have we the abun- 
dant and convincing evidence that many had been 
lighted by the rays of true light to whom was never 
granted any open vision of the Son of Righteous- 
ness ! 

But, with this clearly recognized, that the modes 
and degrees in which Christ may become the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life do not admit of any human 
measurement, there still remains the condition with 
which our text concludes: "No man cometh unto 
the Father but by me!' There is no qualification, 
there is no limitation. In no other way, does the 
Son of Man assert, than by such practical experience 
of the truth manifested in my life, can any human 
soul find access to the Father of spirits. So has it 
always been, so shall it always be. Of the spiritual 
Rock the fathers drank ; of it shall children and chiL 
dren's children drink through all generations. The 
changeless, eternal outlines of experience which the 
text presents are the conditions of all true living 
unto God. The Son of Man asserts for himself in 
this respect an exclusive eminence. He is not 
one among many, but one alone ; He illustrates 
the unalterable law of the spirit of life. In Him 
is the essence of whatever good has ever been in 
human nature, and of whatever good there shall 
ever be. 

In this sense Christ has been aptly termed the 
"contemporary of all ages." A shallow and flip- 
pant unbelief has dared in our day to speak of Christ 
as though He were obsolete. " Show us the Father, 
and it sufficeth us," is its ignorant rejoinder to his 
claims. Alas, has He indeed been so long with us, 
and have we not known Him } Have we so failed 



326 CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 

to comprehend his fullness as not to have learned 
that he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father, 
and that no man cometh unto the Father but by 
Him ? Have we understood so little of our own 
nature and our own wants as to deem that mere 
intellectual progress or scientific culture can ever 
satisfy us ? Have we felt no pain and weariness in 
our pilgrimage of life that have made us yearn for 
the shadow of the Rock of Ages ? 

I speak not now of the Christ of theology, the 
Christ of controversy ; in some such sense Christ 
may be obsolete, for our little systems have their day. 
I speak of the living Christ, — the Christ who sat by 
the well of Jacob, who wept at the grave of Lazarus, 
who suffered the sinful woman to bathe his feet, 
who whispered words of comfort to the dying thief. 
I speak of the Christ who ever liveth, the unseen 
Saviour who is ever coming to his own ; whose pres- 
ence makes the *' path of life we tread to-day as 
strange as that the Hebrews trod ; " who is ever near 
to strengthen and comfort ; whom we bear about with 
us ; whom we know in the fellowship of our earthly 
suffering ; who holds us safe when we sink in deep 
waters ; who in the final hour, when flesh and heart 
fail, is our rod and our staff through the dark valley. 
Tell me, has the world outgrown its need of a Christ 
like this } 

Are men weary of the story of the cross } Are 
they weary of sunrise and of spring } It is ever old, 
yet ever new. Only a pitiful failure to comprehend 
these various and profound aspects in which the 
Son of Man stands related to the spiritual constitu- 
tion of the race, these aspects which himself inti- 
mated when He declared, " I am the Way, the Truth, 



CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. 327 

and the Life ; no man cometh unto the Father but 
by me," — only a pitiful failure to comprehend these 
could have betrayed any into the terrible delusion 
of thinking that they could climb up some other 
way. 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE^ 



Then said they unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 
— John vi. 34. 

The Scriptures emphasize the close analogy be- 
tween the natural and the spiritual world. The 
woman of Samaria coming to draw water at Jacob's 
well was told of the living water, of which whoso- 
ever should drink would never thirst ; this great 
multitude seeking Jesus, not because they saw the 
miracles, but because they did eat of the loaves and 
were filled, were bidden to labor not for the meat 
which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth 
unto everlasting life. 

There is something impressive in the very home- 
liness of these analogies. Our Lord selects, as most 
striking types of spiritual things, the commonest 
necessities of our daily life. He holds out divine 
truth not as a rare luxury, to be enjoyed on great 
occasions, but as the water and the bread that we 
need for every-day support. As these are the in- 
dispensable conditions of our physical being, so is 
the divine nourishment which comes through Him, 
in the same manner the indispensable support of 
our spiritual being. He is the living Bread which 
came down from heaven ; if any man eat of this 
Bread he shall live forever. The miraculous food 

1 Written 1863. 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 329 

which was daily dropped on the weary path trodden 
by the chosen people for forty years, was only a far- 
off anticipation of this living Bread supplied to the 
true Israel of God. The rock smitten by Moses 
was promise of a Rock whereof all may drink. And 
the twelve tribes were not more dependent on those 
daily mercies of their unseen deliverer than are we 
all on daily supplies of this true and living food. 
In the strict and real sense we live thereby. Our 
natural life is but the shadow, and not the substance, 
of that inner and imperishable life that we live by 
eating this bread and by drinking this water that 
Christ supplies. Well may we cry, then, in the lan- 
guage of our text, Lord, evermore give us this 
bread ! 

With how much of divine recognition of the truth 
and new-born yearning for it the multitude uttered 
these words, we cannot say. Whether, as some sup- 
pose, they were here awakened to a recognition of 
spiritual things, or whether they were dazzled still 
by visions of some outward glory, in which they 
would fain be partakers, the context leaves unex- 
plained. It would seem, however, that so full an ex- 
hibition on the part of our Lord of the mystery of 
his spiritual kingdom would scarcely have been 
vouchsafed to such as felt no real longing for spirit- 
ual light. But with how much or how little of mean- 
ing the words were uttered by the multitude, we 
may adopt them as expressing a legitimate demand 
of the soul. " Lord, evermore give us this bread." 
Before we ask even for our daily bread this petition 
should be offered. Better, if need be, go wholly 
without our daily bread, better let the body famish, 
than suffer the soul to lack its nourishment. " There- 



330 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

fore, take no thought, saying what shall we eat or 
what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be 
clothed, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
his righteousness," — this is the monition of the 
Great Teacher. 

As Christ was the Bread of Life, so are his apos- 
tles and ministers the breakers and dispensers of 
that Bread. They can give no such proof that they 
wield an apostolic ministry as when they feed men's 
souls. If they are true apostles, not by man but 
by the Holy Ghost, if they have the divine commis- 
sion that Cometh from above, if through them as 
chosen instruments the Divine Spirit exercises its 
dominion of the souls of men, they will see repeated 
around them the miracle of feeding the great mul- 
titude. Their words may be, indeed, no more than 
five barley loaves and two small fishes, yet if vivified 
and distributed by the Holy Spirit they will suffice 
often to feed five thousand, and still send none empty 
away. To feed and nourish the spiritual life is, then, 
the great end for which the ministry is instituted ; 
and a ministry which does not fulfill this end, no 
matter whatever else may be said about it, must be 
regarded as a failure. No matter how eloquent, no 
matter how richly furnished forth with taste and 
learning, if it does not achieve the supreme end of 
nourishing the inner man, and bringing the soul to 
the completeness of its full and perfect growth, it 
does not accomplish the chief end for which it was 
ordained. Better the rudest, most unlettered min- 
istry, where only the heart is reached, and where the 
hearers are made to grow in grace and in the knowl- 
edge and experience of Christ. '' Evermore give 
us this Bread," is the cry sounding in the ears of 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 33 1 

every preacher of the gospel from the lips of hun- 
gry and perishing men. ** Evermore give us " not 
poor words of human wisdom, but the living word 
of God, whereby we too may live. 

The food of the soul, the living water, the bread 
of God that cometh down from heaven, — what is the 
meaning of these phrases } What is that true bread, 
which not Moses, but only our Heavenly Father, giv- 
eth us } How are we led to crave this heavenly 
manna } How shall we learn to live like our sorely 
tempted Master, not by earthly bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God .? Let these questions, in which lie hid the 
great issues of life eternal, claim for the passing 
hour our earnest thought. 

I. What is the true and living Bread that cometh 
down from heaven "i The question is answered in 
the verse following our text : " And Jesus said unto 
them, I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to 
me shall never hunger ; he that believeth in me 
shall never thirst." And when the Jews murmured 
at this saying, our Lord repeated it in still more 
emphatic language : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink 
his blood, ye have no life in you." Christ, then, is 
the Bread of Life. It is in the knowledge of Him, 
in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
ily, that true life consists. " This is life eternal, that 
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom Thou hast sent." We can know the 
Father only as we know the Son, and he that hath 
the Son hath the Father also. The Bread from 
heaven which the Father gives is therefore his own 
eternal life imparted to us and implanted in us 
through his Son Jesus Christ. 



332 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

When our Lord calls himself the Bread of Life 
He uses figurative language. But every figure sets 
forth some substantial truth. We are not, then, deal- 
ing here with mere metaphors, but with the very- 
realities of the spiritual world. What our Saviour 
means is that He is to us a principle of spiritual 
nourishment, in just as strict and true a sense as 
that the bread we eat is to us a principle of bodily 
nourishment. That bread is in fact but the shadow 
of the true bread which He supplies. Our bodies 
are supported by the food we take. Without this 
constant supply they would inevitably perish. They 
have in them no capacity of self-existence. Our 
spiritual natures need in the same way to be sup- 
plied with nutriment. Without it they too will 
perish. They cannot exist in healthy action, and 
grow day by day to a fuller stature, if shut up to 
their own interior resources. They must be fed 
with living bread, and this living bread is He that 
came down from heaven and gave his life for the 
world. 

Observe that our Lord does not say, " I bring you 
the bread of life," but " I am the Bread of Life." 
" Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have 
no life in you." The meaning of this evidently is 
that the divine nutriment which Christ furnishes 
consists not so much in his formal teaching as in 
his person, in the whole mysterious and life-giving 
efficacy that flowed out from him as Lord of life 
and Head of the new creation. There is a sense in 
which mere instruction is sometimes called food. 
Books are the food of the mind. The intellectual 
nature is nourished and stimulated by them. We 
digest the wise sayings of Bacon and Shakespeare 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 333 

and Burke, and make them a part of our own men- 
tal being. But it would be a strained and unmean- 
ing phrase to say that we eat the flesh and drink 
the blood of Bacon, or Shakespeare, or Burke. It 
must be, then, in some deeper sense than that He 
outwardly instructs us that our Lord calls himself 
the Bread of Life. He touches our springs of being 
by some more vital contact. 

In Him, we are told, was life. He did not come 
simply to reveal eternal truth ; He was the truth, — 
the embodiment in human nature of the eternal 
verity of things ; and the fact that He was this per- 
fect embodiment of truth made Him the full and su- 
preme revelation of it. He was the manifested life 
of God, which men saw with their eyes, and which 
they looked upon, and which their hands handled. 
What He taught was but incidental to what He was. 

In using, therefore, the peculiar phrase, " I am 
the Bread of Life," our Saviour meant to assert for 
himself a dignity and efficacy far beyond those of a 
mere teacher. True, he taught men ; and never 
man spake as He spake. But his oral teaching was 
designed only to introduce men to the true and per- 
fect revelation. This was indeed eternal life, that 
they might know Him ; but they could never know 
Him in the fullness of his saving power if they 
never received Him as more than a mere teacher, 
though sent from God. 

There is doubtless a deep mystery here. But we 
must not shrink from mystery if we would seek out 
the ways of God. There is mystery, which the 
nicest analysis of science cannot unfold, in the way 
in which our daily bread is made to nourish our 
natural bodies. How, from the dead matter on 



334 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

which we feed, is drawn that subtle principle of 
life which builds up our goodly frames and shoots 
through our delicate nerves, thinks in our brains, 
and loves in our hearts, and speaks in our voices, 
and sparkles in our eyes ? Do we ask what is meant 
by the life-giving efficacy of Christ's person ? We 
have the human hints and illustrations of it in every 
life of love and goodness and truth. The love of 
every mother, shining like daily sunlight on her 
child ; quickening its young life as the sunlight 
quickens the perfume and beauty of the rose ; nurs- 
ing it with constant sacrifices of joy, as the rose is 
nursed by the south wind and the dew ; drawing out 
its young affections ; by loving, teaching it to love, 
— all this is illustration of the mighty but mysterious 
working of the living person. And from this which 
we see every day, what shall we argue as to the 
might and efficacy of that person, who was not a 
poor, weak, frail, sinful being like ourselves, but the 
express image of the Infinite Father ; whose love 
was not the love of a mere human friend, but had 
a height and depth and length and breadth that 
pass all knowledge } If the young child is so mar- 
velously nourished by the springs of love that are 
opened in a mother's heart, what may we not expect 
from that heart which compassed all human wants, 
and bore the burden of all human sorrows t If the 
sunshine of mere human goodness can warm the 
soul, and drive from it the chill vapors of selfish- 
ness and hate and doubt, what shall be the effect 
of the rising on it of the Sun of Righteousness, of 
the shining into it of infinite eternal love, of the 
abiding there of heavenly truth, of that divine power 
and presence which were brought near to us in the 
person of Jesus Christ t 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 335 

It might seem at first sight as if our Lord, in this 
likening of himself to the Bread of Life, had dis- 
tinct reference to the sacrament of his body and 
blood, which He afterwards instituted as a perpet- 
ual memorial. But the reference is not to the sac- 
rament ; it is rather to the great truth which the sac- 
rament visibly sets forth, — the great truth, never 
to be forgotten nor lost out of sight, that Christ is 
made available to us not by any outward work, but 
only by a true inward participation in his nature. 
''Abide in me, and I in you," is his own monition 
to his disciples. His spiritual nature must be as- 
similated even as our physical frames assimilate 
the nutritious principle of food, till by degrees 
He becomes so completely inwrought into the be- 
lieving soul that it can say, " It is no longer I that 
live, but Christ that liveth in me." It is in this deep 
inner sense that Christ becomes the Bread of Life. 
Thus it is that we live by faith of the S'on of Man, 
and, in the phrase of the Apostle Peter, are made 
partakers of the divine nature. 

Christ is, then, the Bread of Life, not in the sense 
that He conveys to us instruction in divine truth, 
but in that through Him as indwelling fullness of 
the Godhead was imparted to human nature anew 
principle of life. Christ was head of a new creation, 
as Adam was head of an old. And by the regener- 
ating influence of the Holy Spirit all true believers 
are made partakers of Him, as by natural descent 
we are all partakers of the first man. This is the 
Bread which came down from heaven, of which, if a 
man eat, he shall never die. That infinite love 
which opens its hand daily and satisfies the desire 
of every living thing, which fed Israel with manna 



336 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

in the long march through the wilderness, in the 
fullness of time gave the world this true Bread from 
heaven to eat. It was given for the nourishment of 
men ; for the spiritual food of such as through long 
ages of sin and darkness had been starving upon 
husks. Received into the believing soul, it was life 
eternal. 

2. The insight we have thus gained into the na- 
ture of the Bread of Life will at once suggest the sec- 
ond question, How are we led to crave it ? We are 
drawn to seek our natural food by the natural de- 
sires and wants implanted in us. Our appetites are 
the unmistakable hints that nature gives us, telling 
us what it is we need. It is not reason, it is not 
reflection, it is not intelligent foresight and care for 
self-preservation, that lead the child to ask for food. 
He knows nothing of the kinds of food best suited 
to him ; he knows nothing of the necessity of food 
to sustain his life from day to day ; with him it is 
an instinctive craving and prompting of natural de- 
sire, the involuntary working in him of the great 
laws of that physical world of which himself is part. 
Were he left to follow the dictates of reason and re- 
flection before he tasted his first food, he would in- 
evitably starve. We call these promptings instinct. 
These are seen not in man alone, but in all living 
things. The very flowers, by an instinct of their 
own, seek the light, and the roots of trees grope 
about in the dark chambers of the earth for damp 
and mellow spots. We call it a law of growth ; but 
whether we call it instinct or law, it is all the same. 
It is the invisible power of God working in all 
things and through all things, and bringing all 
things to pass in the fit time and season ; doing 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 337 

whatsoever pleases Him in heaven and in earth, in 
the seas and in all deep places ; causing the grass 
to grow, and feeding the young ravens when they 
cry. Wherever we turn we are compassed about 
with the divine arms of this all-embracing Spirit. 
The heart refuses at the bidding of a blind science 
to put it aside as the working of me^'e natural laws. 
The laws of nature, — what are they but established 
and familiar modes of God's operation ? It is His 
hand that sober wisdom sees in everything. Our 
hunger and thirst, our weariness, our aches and 
pains, even, are only His tender monitions. They 
waken in us the sense of those wants which his 
goodness is waiting to satisfy. 

Shall we scruple to believe that in his grander 
spiritual creation the divine Maker works in analo- 
gous ways ; that there, too, his ever-watchful, be- 
nignant providence in the same manifold arrange- 
ments compasses us about ; and when we know not 
what are our most crying wants, when we are all 
unconscious of our deepest needs, when we are too 
much blinded by sin to realize our actual condition, 
that His infinite compassion in the same way awak- 
ens in our souls the slumbering spiritual instincts, 
and causes us to hunger and to thirst after life eter- 
nal ; that when, in the weakness and infancy of our 
spiritual being, we do not take in the tremendous 
issues of life and death, nor see that we need to be 
fed daily with this true and living Bread, nor yet un- 
derstand by any intelligent perception and reflection 
of our own how our spiritual wants may be supplied, 
— that then His merciful spirit takes possession of 
us, lifting us up from our own weakness into the 
strength and blessedness of His divine guidance ? 



338 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

This was our Saviour's meaning when to the Jews 
who murmured because He said, " I am the Bread 
which came down from heaven," He answered, " No 
man can come to me except the Father which hath 
sent me draw him." Does this seem a hard say- 
ing ? Are there those in our day as well as Christ's 
who cannot bear it ? But no mountain oak thrusts 
its gnarled roots into the rents and fissures provided 
for it ; no bird pursues its unerring way through the 
pathless tracts of air ; no young lion goes in search 
of its prey, unless our Heavenly Father draweth it. 
Nothing is left to itself. All things are impelled 
and' driven and drawn and awakened to act by a 
spirit that dwelleth within them. Over the whole 
creation the great truth is written, " It is not we that 
work, but God that worketh in us." Whether we 
cry out for our daily bread, or whether we cry, " Lord, 
evermore give us the true and living Bread," it is 
our Heavenly Father that first quickens the yearn- 
ing in our breasts. 

And even as in his natural creation God tempts 
and solicits our appetites with all manner of food 
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, paint- 
ing the fruits with luscious tints, and bathing them 
with fragrance, so He stirs our slumbering spiritual 
senses with the visible presence and beauty of his 
divine life among us ; bidding us behold his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth. He sets before us One fairer 
than the children of men ; One anointed with the oil 
of gladness above his fellows, all whose garments 
smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia. He seeks to 
rouse our dormant yearnings by the vision of One 
altogether lovely. He entices us with the fruit of 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 339 

the tree of life. He leads us gently beside the 
springs of living water. By the working of his own 
Spirit in us He stimulates our thirst. In the wea- 
riness and want and disquietude of life there falls on 
our ears the invitation, " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

And when of the sick man, languishing on his 
bed, refusing to be tempted with food, turning away 
with loathing from the most delicate viands that 
skill can suggest or tenderest affection press to his 
lips, we draw sorrowful conclusions, believing that 
his end is nigh, what inference shall we draw re- 
specting the nature and intensity of that disease 
that afflicts the soul, — that disease that has so com- 
pletely blunted its appetite for truth and holiness 
that when even the Bread of Life is put before it it 
feels no desire to taste .'* If we begin to take alarm 
when our daily food no longer tempts, if we begin 
to suspect that some secret disease is poisoning the 
springs of life, can we feel wholly unconcerned 
when the great things of the spiritual world no longer 
take hold on us, — when we find ourselves fast sink- 
ing into a state of stupid indifference respecting our 
responsibilities as immortal beings } 

3. Having thus seen how the appetite is first 
wakened in us, let us further consider how it is 
that we eat the Bread. How is it that Christ is 
made our daily food } Clearly we do not live merely 
by having our appetite awakened. The bird, the 
beast, the child, must do something more than feel 
the pangs of hunger. Even the food in itself is 
nothing ; it is the food digested, assimilated, made 
a part of the system by the subtle chemistry of the 
body, that alone strengthens man. In the same way 



340 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

our spiritual yearnings, left to themselves, accom- 
plish nothing. It does us no good to hunger and 
thirst after righteousness if we do nothing but hun- 
ger and thirst. Only he that eateth the Bread hath 
eternal life. Besides the divine drawing, then, that 
first impels, we have ourselves a work to do. By 
our readiness to seize the heaven-sent opportunity, 
and by our diligence in using it, the blessing must 
be secured. The question is, then, craving the 
Bread, how shall we eat .-* 

Words need not be multiplied in answering this 
question. The secret springs of life eternal, the 
first dim yearnings of the soul, may lie far back 
in God's eternal providence ; but the stream is clear ; 
the path we all have to tread is so plain that the 
wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. 
We taste the bread of life only as we become the 
partakers of Christ. We eat his flesh and drink 
his blood only so far as we enter into living fellow- 
ship with Him. To know Him is life eternal ; but 
we can know Him truly by no mere intellectual 
search, by no mere sentimental worship ; we can 
know Him only by the plain, honest, practical method 
of obeying his precepts. '' If any man," says He, 
" will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take 
up his cross and follow me." The bread and the 
wine of which He bade us partake as perpetual me- 
morials were memorials of a sacrifice, the meaning 
and reality of which we must ourselves experience. 

If we would taste the divine food we must be 
willing, hke our blessed Master, to make it our meat 
and our drink, to do the will of our Father which 
is in heaven. We must learn to care more for the 
immortal soul than for the perishing body ; we must 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 34 1 

seek the kingdom of heaven before we seek any 
worldly gain or advantage. We must gladly count 
all else as loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus, our Lord. We must find in Him 
our supreme and perfect delight. The gospel recog- 
nizes no other mode of abiding in Christ except this 
practical mode of making Him our only model, and 
pressing on towards Him as the mark set before 
us. We must be like Him to know Him as He is. 
Through the mysterious alchemy of a daily com- 
munion must He be made our life, and we be trans- 
formed into his image. The path that He trod lies 
before each one of us. We must be ready to do his 
will if we would know, by experience, his doctrine. 

This may be a hard road, but no one can deny 
that it is a straight and a plain road. And though 
hard to travel by our own unassisted strength, yet 
He who has been pleased to hide from the wise and 
the prudent the things that are revealed to babes 
causes many a weak child to run along it and not be 
weary, to walk in it and not faint. Many a hum- 
ble spirit, but scantily furnished with mere intel- 
lectual knowledge of Christ ; far removed from the 
imposing rites which kindle the imagination and 
work upon the natural sensibilities ; struggling with 
the hard trials of common life, with little sympathy 
or help from those around, but entering through 
the mystery of its own temptation into the deeper 
mystery of its tempted Lord ; sustained by his pres- 
ence, and lifted above all earthly struggles to the 
joy of his companionship, has been brought to un- 
derstand the meaning of his declaration that man 
liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God ! 



342 CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 

We may sometimes be led to ask ourselves the 
question, whether we are deriving the nourishment 
that we should from divine truth. It may be our 
lot to live in the midst of unusual religious oppor- 
tunities ; we may be accustomed to a frequent hear- 
ing of the Gospel, we may be strict and constant in 
our attendance upon public worship, and yet it may 
be that we do not grow in the divine life, we may 
find that we are losing our interest in religious 
truth ; the preaching of the word may seem cold 
and profitless. Alas, no religious advantages have 
in themselves any power to feed the soul. The 
purest and most earnest preaching, the preaching 
of an inspired apostle, nay, the preaching of Christ 
himself, can minister nutriment to the spiritual na- 
ture only so far as it shapes our lives. It is not by 
hearing but by obeying that we grow ; just as our 
natural strength is not in proportion to what we eat, 
but in proportion to what we digest, and make part 
of ourselves. We are not fed, because, in some 
solemn gathering, borne away by the full tide of 
awakened feeling, we are rapt into heavenly ec- 
stasy ; we are not fed because beneath the magic 
sway of some great pulpit orator we are alternately 
roused and terrified and melted ; we are truly fed 
by the bread of life only when we come ourselves 
to live by it ; only when we bear about with us in 
all our common walks the body of Christ ; when we 
are made to drink of his cup and be baptized with 
his baptism. 

Is it then our first and great desire to be fed daily 
with this true and living bread t Is it our earliest 
prayer as we rise in the morning, is it the burden 
that rests on our hearts during the toil of the day, 



CHRIST, THE BREAD OF LIFE. 343 

not that we may prosper in our gettings, not that we 
may be increased in worldly goods, in reputation 
and honor with men, but that before all else we may 
be nourished with this divine food ? Could the 
thoughts and wishes that daily occupy us be ana- 
lyzed and exposed to our view, would this petition 
be found lying at the roots of all other aims and 
hopes *' Lord, evermore give us this bread " ? Can 
we expect to grow in the divine life if we do not dil- 
igently practice the divine precepts ? Can we be 
fed by the living bread while we surfeit ourselves 
with the meat that perisheth ? Can we live by faith 
of the Son of Man when in all our practical con- 
cerns we give so much more thought, so much more 
care, so much more anxiety to the things which are 
seen and temporal, than to the things which are un- 
seen and eternal ? 

" Lord, evermore give us this bread," do we re- 
alize how momentous for every soul among us is 
this request ? Do we feel how small and trivial a 
matter it is what we shall eat, and what we shall 
drink, and how we shall be clothed, in the few days 
of our earthly life, compared with the great and over- 
whelming question. What shall be the nourishment 
and support of our immortal parts ? What shall 
we eat and what shall we drink ? Shall we eat the 
bread of pride and worldliness, and drink the bitter 
water of disappointment and remorse and despair ; 
or shall we eat the true bread that cometh down 
from heaven, and drink of the water that springeth 
up unto everlasting life ? There is only One that 
can satisfy. He is the Bread of Life. He that 
cometh to Him shall never hunger ; and he that be- 
lieveth on Him shall never thirst. 



CHRIST IN THE POWER OF HIS 
RESURRECTION.^ 



That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection. — Phil. 
iii. 10. 

This prayer of the Apostle, that he might know 
the power of his Lord's resurrection, so far as the 
mere language is concerned, may be interpreted in 
two ways. It may mean a desire to comprehend 
the nature of that supernatural agency or power by 
which the resurrection was effected, or a desire to 
understand the influence or power which the resur- 
rection was fitted to exert. In the one case it would 
be a speculative, in the other a practical, inquiry. 
That it was the latter aspect of the inquiry which 
presented itself to the Apostle's mind, may be in- 
ferred as well from the general tenor of his teaching 
as from the specific drift of the context in which the 
phrase is embedded. He, whose uniform habit it is 
to view spiritual truth as vested in some actual ex- 
perience, seems in this exultant utterance of faith, 
so soon to be changed to sight, to insist with more 
than usual energy on the connection between Chris- 
tian doctrine and Christian life. True, the resur- 
rection was a great fact, the primary truth of apos- 
tolic doctrine, the doctrine which dominated the 

1 Written in 1874. 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 345 

faith of the apostolic church. No Apostle was 
prompter than St. Paul himself to concede it this 
preeminence. In his view it was the corner-stone 
of the whole fabric of Christian teaching. If it 
were not true, his associates in the great work of 
founding the church had propagated a lie, and all 
preaching is vain. Whether before the skeptical 
Agrippa or the mocking Athenians, he never puts it 
in the background. In all his epistles to his breth- 
ren it is insisted on as the impregnable basis of 
belief. 

The resurrection as an actual fact of history, a 
fact which multitudes who had been admitted to 
intercourse with the risen Christ were ready to at- 
test, was the most powerful weapon with which the 
apostolic church confronted the bigotry and indiffer- 
ence of Jew and Gentile. In no other way, save in 
the assumption of the reality of this event, can we 
account for the marvelous transformation of the 
church itself, which so swiftly converted the doubt- 
ing disciples, who fled from their Lord's last agony, 
into preachers, who stood undismayed before the 
judgment seat of kings. 

To our critical, hesitating minds, the questions 
that most naturally suggest themselves in connec- 
tion with such a mysterious phenomenon are ques- 
tions as to the agency by which it was effected. 
We shrink from admitting so stupendous a break 
of the natural order; we curiously scan the testi- 
mony ; we note the seeming contradictions ; nay, 
we even turn from it in a kind of sad perplexity, 
as something too hard to be believed, and yet 
too well attested to be utterly denied, and so in 
our scheme of faith it stands too often an insoluble 



346 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

enigma outside the circle of our shaping religious 
thought. 

But this speculative solution of the mystery was 
not what the Apostle desired to know. What he 
craves is a knowledge of the resurrection as a vital 
and as a vitalizing truth ; not an explanation of its 
external circumstance, but an experience of its spir- 
itual power. To him it is not a bare historic fact, 
nor mere fulfillment of old prediction, nor tran- 
scendent demonstration even of the divine authority 
of Christ ; it was all this, but more ; it was closely 
knit with his own experience ; a fruitful principle 
and spiritual energy, the shaping law of that new 
life which he no longer lived in the flesh, but by the 
faith of the Son of God. To know Christ, there- 
fore, in the power of his resurrection in this sense, 
which the Apostle meant, was to know those spirit- 
ual influences which proceed from the resurrection 
as a central principle or law. Or, in other words, it 
is to experience the power of the risen Christ in his 
relation to our own spiritual life ; to recognize Him 
as our living head ; to walk with Him in the new 
life of a personal communion ; to have our lives hid 
with Him in God. This is the knowledge that the 
Apostle craves, and beside the excellency of which 
he counts all else as loss. This is the mark to which 
he presses forward. Much of his language, in 
speaking of this knowledge, may seem but meta- 
phor, yet, if we look closely, he is describing no 
shadowy or unsubstantial thing. He is dealing with 
the great facts of the spiritual life ; he is describ- 
ing something that lies close to the actual experi- 
ence of the soul ; not a dreamer of idle dreams, but 
a man sorely tried and buffeted in life's great strug- 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 347 

gle, and writing to men who had themselves suffered 
too much in behalf of Christ to be put off with 
sounding words. We seem to hear the strong tones 
of a great spiritual hero, not the shrill accents of a 
heated enthusiast, when he declares " It is no longer 
I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." We can- 
not, in fact, read a page of his epistles without being 
struck by the practical power always exercised over 
him by this ever-present sense of his personal rela- 
tion to the risen Christ. From the day when his 
bold, uncompromising, intolerant career received 
such sudden check, as he was struck down on his 
journey to Damascus, on to the hour when he 
penned these burning utterances beneath the very 
shadow of Caesar's palace, his life was pervaded and 
glorified with this conviction. He who had never 
seen Christ after the flesh seemed to walk ever with 
him in the closeness and reality of a more than 
mortal intercourse. 

Whether it is meant that most disciples should 
reach this high mark and taste the blissful expe- 
rience of the Apostle who was deemed worthy to 
be caught up to the third heaven, and who heard 
unspeakable words which it is not lawful for man 
to utter, we may not say ; yet many of his declara- 
tions without doubt imply that this practical expe- 
rience of the power of the resurrection is designed 
to enter into all earnest Christian life. Not to 
know Christ in this way is to lose out of our spirit- 
ual experience its most animating principle ; not 
to know Him thus is to turn to the dead past and 
shut our eyes to the living present. 

Two considerations at the outset will help us to 
apprehend the meaning of this phrase. 



348 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

In the first place such experience of the power 
of the resurrection is obviously an experience that 
can be tasted only by believers. It is the prayer of 
the great Apostle that he himself might know it ; 
it is to his brethren that the exhortation is ad- 
dressed that they should press on to know it also. 
In other words, whatever may be the precise nature 
of such experience, it is not an experience arising 
from the ordinary conditions of human life, but is a 
special and distinctive prerogative of Christian faith. 
The Apostle in this epistle is not addressing the un- 
believing world but his dear Philippians, his loved 
and longed for, his joy and crown, to whom his 
thoughts turned with delight, the very remembrance 
of whom lifted his soul in thankfulness to God. In 
the flowing confidence of a spiritual communion and 
sympathy which no separation could impair, he writes 
to them of those joys and hopes of the inner life 
which only a common faith could enable them to 
understand. He lifts the veil of the spiritual tem- 
ple, and beckons them within the holy place. His 
pregnant sayings can have no meaning but to those 
who lived in the same circle of supernatural con- 
victions with himself. 

Nor is there anything singular in this. The res- 
urrection itself, viewed in its main design, was sub- 
ject to the same limitations. It has been common 
to speak of the resurrection as a great crowning 
miracle, the primary design of which was to con- 
vince an unbelieving world by a conclusive demon- 
stration of the divine power of Christ. But were 
this its leading aim it is hard to see why Christ 
only showed himself in such mysterious and per- 
plexing ways ; why He showed himself to his disci- 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 349 

pies only. If his rising from the dead was meant 
as convincing proof for all, why did He not show 
himself to those who sent Him to death ; why did 
He not show himself again in the streets of Jerusa- 
lem, and let his voice be heard once more in the 
Temple courts ? He did nothing of all this. He 
displayed himself to his disciples ; He spoke to those 
who already believed in his name ; in all his move- 
ments during the mysterious period of forty days 
that intervened between his resurrection and his 
ascension He most evidently indicated that the great 
and primary purpose of the resurrection was not so 
much to furnish a new weapon to the armory of 
Christian evidence, as to supply a new agency in 
the development of Christian faith. The resurrec- 
tion was not meant as a thaumaturgical display, but 
as a spiritual power. 

And, secondly, the foregoing considerations sug- 
gest a further condition under which alone it is 
possible for the soul to experience the power of the 
resurrection, that is, that the recognition of Christ 
in the communion and sympathy of his risen life is, 
in every case, the result of a practical expression of 
his human life. This condition is implied in the 
verses, of which our text forms a part, where the 
Apostle prays that he may know Christ in the power 
of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his suf- 
fering. There is a unity of Christian experience ; 
it is not something artificial and disjointed, but 
forms an organic whole like the vine and its branches. 
There is but one door by which we all enter in. The 
Apostle's writings abound with emphatic statement 
of this principle. If we would rise from a lower to 
a higher spiritual level, after the great analogy of 



350 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

Christ's resurrection, we must first taste the death 
of self-renunciation and self-sacrifice and of struggle 
with our lower nature. We cannot be planted in 
the likeness of his resurrection unless first planted 
in the likeness of his death. '* Therefore," says the 
Apostle, " we are buried with Him by baptism unto 
death ; that like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father even so we also 
should walk in newness of life." Life out of death 
is the universal law. 

To know Christ, therefore, in the power of his 
resurrection we must first know Him in the fellow- 
ship of his sufferings and death. The suffering 
Christ is the central figure on which the thought 
and faith of the increasing years concentrate. It 
was the figure that the prophet saw in vision when 
he told of One who should be despised and rejected 
and whose visage should be marred ; it is the figure 
on which Christian art has lavished her most con- 
summate touch. The Man of Sorrows remains the 
great marvel of time. By what mysterious law of 
moral government the Son of God was thus made 
to suffer and die has been the perplexing question 
of Christian thought. This question seems in part, 
at least, solved when we come to look at the suffer- 
ings of Christ as the divine analogy of our own 
spiritual lives. '^ For it became Him," we are told, 
*' for whom are all things and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make 
the captain of their salvation perfect through suffer- 
ing." In this view the sufferings of Christ cease 
to be something anomalous and strange. They il- 
lustrate a universal principle. His death on the 
cross no longer stands apart. We too must die unto 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 35 I 

sin would we attain unto the resurrection from the 
dead. " For even hereunto," says the Apostle, ''were 
ye called because Christ hath suffered for us, leav- 
ing us an example that ye should follow in his 
steps." 

The traveler who speeds from Rome to Naples, 
in his luxurious railway carriage, as he catches the 
view on the overhanging height of the famous mon- 
astery where Benedict gathered his first disciples, 
and imposed the rule destined for a thousand years 
to rally the most earnest faith of Christendom, is 
apt to think of monastic virtues as not less obso- 
lete than the feudal compact. It may be that self- 
renunciation and self-sacrifice are not conspicuous 
features of modern Christianity. But the principle 
which Benedict, perhaps unwisely, hardened into 
rule can never be obsolete. It is old as Christianity, 
and can only die with Faith itself. " If any man 
will come after me let him deny himself and take 
up his cross and follow me," remains still the divine 
injunction. Spiritual insight cannot be purchased 
with easy living. The elect spirits to whom has 
been vouchsafed the inner intuition have always 
been the crucified ones. The mystery of suffering 
is not a problem for the intellect to solve ; the law 
of life has never been summed up in any dogmatic 
statement. They alone have known the Christ of 
God who have been made partakers of his suffer- 
ings. He was first-born among many brethren. 
The path He trod is the straight and narrow way 
that lies before each one of them. 

With these preliminary considerations, we may 
advance more safely in explication of our text. And 
the first and most obvious result of this knowing 



352 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

Christ in the power of his resurrection is the quick- 
ening of our sense of supernatural things. I use 
the term simply to designate that which lies above 
that ordinary plane of natural things in which as 
creatures of time and sense we live and move and 
have our being. It is nothing to our present pur- 
pose to determine anything respecting the relation 
of the natural and the supernatural. For aught we 
know they may be but two sides of the same truth, 
blending to the infinite eye in pure and simple 
white, but which as relative to us seem distinct. 
We recognize in our habitual speech the distinction 
between things seen and things not seen, we draw a 
line betv^een the temporal and the eternal. 

It is safe to say that all religion rests on the 
recognition of this distinction. The savage who 
carves out his unshapely idol instinctively expresses 
his dim sense of something above that ordinary 
world in which he lives. If this distinction be ob- 
literated, religion is reduced to the sphere of com- 
mon human ethics. It rests on human sanctions. 
It must rise above them ; it must reach up to a 
higher sphere ; it must incorporate into itself ener- 
gies of a different kind to become a practical prin- 
ciple of faith and worship. The point is too plain 
to need any argument ; the very essence of religion 
is the instinctive recognition of a something above 
ourselves which we call the supernatural. No psy- 
chological analysis of human nature can fail to recog- 
nize this instinct. It belongs to man as man. He 
is not more certainly a social being than he is a re- 
ligious being. Speech is not a more universal im- 
pulse than is worship. And when under the blight- 
ing influence of some false system of metaphysics 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 353 

he has, in a few individual instances, succeeded in 
suppressing this instinctive tendency, his own sad 
confessions testify to his haunting sense of unrest 
and want. And if individuals have in a few instances 
achieved the melancholy distinction of ignoring the 
supernatural, and living without God, nations have 
never done so. The basis of historic progress has 
been this recognition. That continuous develop- 
ment which has come down through the centuries, 
and now bears us along in its mighty sweep, began 
with the patriarch of whom it is emphatically said 
that he believed God. The great empires that tow- 
ered in colossal majesty around him have passed 
away, but he still lives. That faith in the supernat- 
ural which led him away from his own country is 
essentially our faith, and his name is a household 
word to-day in either hemisphere. 

Now Christianity is peculiar in the distinctive 
prominence which it assigns these supernatural 
agencies. In other religions the supernatural exists 
as a dim border land surrounding our human life, 
the future is an undiscovered country from which 
no traveler has returned ; the vague realm where 
disembodied spirits flit in a doubtful identity and 
recognition ; but in Christianity the supernatural 
and natural exist together, they interpenetrate each 
other ; the soul is the perfect synthesis of these two 
spheres which to the natural understanding seem 
so wide apart. It is not left to seek in the distant 
future its supreme felicity — the kingdom of heaven 
is in itself. 

The gospel presents itself to us in various aspects, 
and in all of these it challenges attention. It is a 
wondrous history, telling in language that children 
23 



354 ^^^ POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

can understand, the most sublime, pathetic story 
recorded in any literature ; it is a mighty code of 
ethics touching the conscience at more points, and 
testing human action more profoundly than most 
subtle rules of casuistry ; all subsequent experience 
has only enlarged its application and illustrated its 
sufficiency, yet we do not begin to understand its 
scope or feel its power if we do not recognize the 
fact that it rests throughout on the presence and 
constant operation in us of the invisible things of 
God. 

Now the resurrection was an event eminently 
fitted to intensify this sense of the supernatural 
order. What with the disciples had been a vague, 
shadowy belief was now felt in the power of an 
actual experience. Henceforth to them the earthy 
and the spiritual seemed no longer far apart. They 
tabernacled in both worlds. They were profoundly 
conscious that the kingdom which they had so ear- 
nestly expected was already come ; they who so 
lately had been trembling and dismayed were con- 
verted to men of heroic mould by the lofty confi- 
dence that they were the children of God and that 
they were compassed 'about with a great cloud of 
witnesses. In thus refusing to recognize any mid- 
dle wall between the visible and the invisible the 
perfected faith of the disciples agrees with the trust- 
ful confidence of the child. The kingdom of heaven 
flings wide its gates to both. And who of us is 
willing to affirm that the visions vouchsafed to such 
as these are but the phantasies of a sick brain. 
Who that has journeyed with some loved one to the 
extremest verge of life, and bent tenderly to catch 
the last expiring breath, and felt the solemn awe of 



i 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 355 

that supreme moment when the spirit trembles be- 
tween two worlds, but has felt that even before the 
earthly house is dissolved the glory of the heavenly 
is revealed. 

I know in history no more pathetic story than of 
the slow, lingering death of the boy-prince, the son 
of the unhappy Louis XVI. Doomed to a loath- 
some dungeon for no other offense than being a 
king's son, shut out from light and air, fed with the 
miserable food of the vilest malefactor, consigned 
to the remorseless tortures of a monster in human 
shape ; as if this were not enough, the unresisting 
victim kicked and beaten because he would not re- 
vile his mother's memory and because he persisted 
in saying, by his wretched cot, the prayer he had 
been taught to utter by her knee. And when Na- 
ture, more merciful than man, brought on the close 
of the long, solitary night of pain and anguish, and 
the last morning came, and the dying child, in an- 
swer to the inquiry of his keeper, whether he was 
in pain, murmured, with weak voice, '' Yes, but I 
hear sweet music ; I hear my mother's voice," who 
of us will dare to say that this was mere delusion 
with which his fevered brain- peopled that solitary 
cell, or that if he dreamed, it was not such dreams 
as Jacob had .? 

But the soul that knows Christ in the power of 
his resurrection goes beyond this. It is not simply 
the general sense of the supernatural that is thus 
intensified, but that supernatural sphere is brought 
closely home to us in which the Son of Man stands 
revealed as the central figure. The invisible world 
is no longer a mere spiritual existence ; it assumes 
a definite aspect, it is revealed in distinct rela- 



356 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

tions, it becomes a kmgdom of heaven. The per- 
sonal soul is quickened with the apprehension of 
personal affinities ; it feels more than mere faith in 
immortality ; as it gazes steadfast into heaven, like 
the dying Stephen, it sees Jesus standing at the 
right hand of God ! 

Hence in strictest sense the power of the resurrec- 
tion is the power that comes from the communion 
with a living person. And this, we must believe, 
suggests the main reason why Christ thus rose from 
the dead and showed himself to his wondering dis- 
ciples. We can, indeed, conceive that, without the 
resurrection, Christianity might have been estab- 
lished ; that when the first bewilderment of grief 
was over the disciples might have come together, 
and might have called to mind what Christ spoke 
when on earth, and might have organized some so- 
ciety for the diffusion of his doctrine. Then would 
they have thought of Him, as they thought of Moses 
and the prophets, as one who had been with them 
for a season, and had vanished utterly away. But 
the resurrection would not allow them to think of 
the Master thus. His mysterious intercourse evi- 
dently established a sense of continued personal 
relationship which they could have gained in no 
other way. Henceforth they no longer thought of 
Him as dead, but as living, — as living in a spiritual 
communion and intercourse with his disciples, of 
the closeness and reality of which his few years of 
earthly sojourn had been only the fleeting and im- 
perfect type. They did not seek Him in the grave; 
the superstition which surrounded with such halo 
the place of his sepulchre belonged to a later age, 
when the vivid sense of the living Christ had faded 
from men's hearts. 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 357 

Thus while on the one hand the resurrection freed 
the disciples from the sway of mere earthly memo- 
ries, so that they no longer clung to the mere human 
Christ, feeding the faith with the cherished recollec- 
tions of his human ministry, the same Christ being 
now exalted above the heavens, the Lord of life, not 
to the few who heard his voice, but to all who should 
believe on his name ; so just as much on the other 
hand it kept this more personal faith in Him from 
evaporating into any vague sense of spiritual power 
and might. Though they might not any longer 
identify Him with mere earthly scenes, yet was He 
the same Jesus who stretched out his hand to Peter, 
and who wept by the grave of Lazarus. 

The power of the resurrection is, therefore, the 
power of sympathy with an immortal friend. It is 
the distinctive feature of all highest truth that it 
cannot be revealed in abstract statements. The 
moment we subject it to rigid analysis and defini- 
tion its fragrance and bloom depart. Men make no 
drearier mistake than when they fancy that they 
can sum up truth in a series of propositions. Mere 
truths of relation may be thus stated ; but truth in 
the highest sense, truth of character and life, defies 
such petty manipulation. No religion can be stated 
in a creed. If it be the living truth it can only be 
embodied in a life ; hence the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us. The resurrection perpetuates 
the incarnation. It carries on and renders fruitful 
through all the ages the distinctive influence that 
centred in the Son of Man. To the eye of faith it 
holds up the highest truth not as doctrine to be 
studied, but as a person to be loved. It thus sets 
in motion a unique system of spiritual agencies. It 



358 THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

is thus that Christ becomes the living head of that 
Church which is his body. The saving influences 
that ceaselessly radiate from Him are vital influences, 
— the influence of a person over persons. When 
looked at as an attempt to symbolize this central 
principle of the new creation, the mass itself seems 
more than unmeaning mummery. 

Is it said that in all this we are dealing with the 
ideal ; that faith itself creates these relations on 
which it seems to feed ; that they are powerless in 
presence of the hard realities of life .'* But can we 
reduce them to airy nothing without denying the 
fundamental facts on which the whole fabric of the 
Gospel rests .'' Can we deny this power of the res- 
urrection without denying the resurrection itself, 
without denying the very Christ of history .-* They 
exist together like vine and branches ; they are part 
and parcel of an organic spiritual v/hole ; why ac- 
cept Him as a teacher come from God, if we refuse to 
accept his own sublimest sayings } 

In cherishing this sense of personal communion 
with a living person we are dealing with an ideal, 
if by ideal we mean something which our gross nat- 
ural senses cannot recognize ; but are we on that 
account dealing with something that does not exert 
over us a felt power t What, after all, in life so 
allures us and so transforms us as the ideals that 
we cherished } And when we remember that this 
ideal is not an ideal of the intellect, but an ideal of 
the heart, who will measure its mighty transforming 
power } Thus, indeed, it is that we all, with open 
face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
are changed into the same image from glory to 
glory. This transforming power exercised by the 



THE POWER OF CEIRIST'S RESURRECTION. 359 

living Christ over such as cherish Him with faith 
and love is indeed the transcendent grace of Chris- 
tianity. This ideal of the risen Saviour, if you 
choose to designate it by such phrase, how it has 
wrought itself into human life ! I have in mind not 
the supreme intellects who have confessed it, and 
whose spiritual experiences have become illustrious 
landmarks in the history of the race, but rather the 
innumerable multitude of the poor, the lowly, the un- 
educated, whose lives of toil, of privation, of suffer- 
ing have been transfigured by this gracious presence. 
By how many bedsides of the neglected and forgot- 
ten has this image of the Son of Man been revealed ? 
In how many abodes, but scantily furnished with 
this world's goods, has He been a familiar, though 
unseen, visitant ? In how many souls shut out from 
opportunities of learning human lore has this be- 
nignant culture been diffused ? Along how many 
a dusty pathway of modern life men have felt their 
hearts burn within them as they have talked together 
of these things ? '' Because thou hast seen me thou 
hast believed," said our Lord to Thomas ; " blessed 
are they that have not seen and yet have believed ; " 
yea, blessed are they who have so realized the power 
of the resurrection that in their pilgrimage of Hfe 
they have been solaced with this divine society whose 
habitual conversation is thus with the heavenly pow- 
ers. What is life without this belief } 



THE HOLY SPIRIT — THE GUIDE 
TO TRUTH.i 



Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you 
into all truth. — John xvi. 13. 

" To this end," said Jesus, " was I born, and for 
this cause came I into the world, that I should bear 
witness unto the truth," and never has man ap- 
proached nearer to that ideal perfectness revealed 
in the Son of Man, than when seeking after truth. 
The lovers of truth have led the hopes of the world ; 
the getters of it have compassed the chief good of 
life. The fading years leave them girded with a 
glory and a majesty beside which the pomp of kings 
seems poor. As we look back over the past, the 
names that the world cherishes with greatest rev- 
erence are the names not of heroes and rulers, but 
the names of patient seekers after truth. 

It is after all the only real legacy with which one 
age can endow the next. All else perishes, and 
" leaves not a rack behind." All material things 
have in them the seed of their own decay. The 
structures that human pride and power erect all 
fall to pieces. Mournful lessons are recited to us, 
as we linger amid ruins that were meant as mon- 

1 Written in 1862. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 361 

uments of human glory, but which serve only as 
monuments of human nothingness. 

Only truth endures ; and the fervent worshipper 
who has but partially raised the veil, comes at last 
to be revered as the world's best benefactor. There 
is no vocation that deserves to be weighed with this. 
That human soul in which is implanted the convic- 
tion that for this end it, too, was born, and for this 
cause it came into the world, can smile with pity at 
the prizes which vulgar ambition covets. He has 
riches which the merchandise of gold and silver 
cannot equal. Such a soul remains, however, an in- 
explicable phenomenon to two large classes. They 
stand at opposite extremes, and seem diametrically 
opposed, yet in fact are much alike. First are those 
whose conception of v/hat is true never goes be- 
yond the things presented to the senses. They lack 
the ideal element. They believe in material exist- 
ences, in material goods ; they care only for what 
is actual and tangible, for that which has some pos- 
itive relation to present wants. This species of 
materialism is not always coarse and vulgar ; on the 
contrary it is sometimes very subtle and refined. It 
is shown not unfrequently in connection with the 
highest scientific culture and most exquisite literary 
taste. But it is everywhere the same breath of a 
positive philosophy. It ahvays asserts itself with 
the same denial of what lies beyond the actual. It 
suffers its scheme of truth to be restricted to those 
truths which rest on the basis of rigid scientific 
demonstration. 

In minds, hov/ever, of only ordinary activity and 
culture, and such are the great majority, this form 
of indifference to truth is often exhibited in connec- 



362 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

tion with mere worldliness and selfishness. Men of 
this stamp care very little what truth is, if they only 
achieve success. All they want is wealth or station, 
and in pursuit of these tangible results they brutal- 
ize themselves without compunction. The specta- 
cle is so common that it hardly excites remark, yet 
when we consider it, what is there so pitiable as 
this utter degradation of the soul, this complete in- 
sensibility to what is noblest and most satisfying in 
life ; this blank denial of what constitutes a man ? 
Did we not have the illustration of it furnished 
every day, who could believe that the soul, created 
in God's own image, could become so small t Who 
could believe that the immortal instincts, which vin- 
dicate for man his headship over the creation, could 
be so effectually smothered up } 

But there is still a second class, very distinct from 
these, yet not less indifferent to truth. A man may 
be indifferent to truth for two reasons : because he . 
does not believe in truth, or because he believes 
he has the whole truth. In either case he ceases 
to inquire further. Nor is it easy to say which of 
these two classes hinders truth the more ; whether 
it is more effectually stifled by skepticism or con- 
ceit ; whether its worst foe is worldliness or big- 
otry. It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to see men 
sunk in selfish unconcern ; to see them wasting 
their lives in pursuit of that which will perish in the 
using ; but it is not less pitiable to see those who 
will not on any account allow their preconceived 
opinions to be disturbed ; who cherish their own 
ignorance and narrowness as something sacred ; 
whose halting souls, instead of pressing ever toward 
the mark, come to a dead stop, and reproach others 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 363 

for passing by them. It is a disheartening thing 
for a preacher of that Gospel, which is not a letter 
that killeth but a spirit that giveth life, to have his 
hearers listen with cold indifference, to have them 
push aside that priceless wine and oil for the husks 
that swine do eat, but it is not any less dishearten- 
ing to have them steel themselves in opposition to 
what he says, simply because it is something that 
they did not know before, to have them answer, as 
he seeks, like a wise householder, to bring forth from 
his treasures things new and old, '* I am satisfied 
with what I have, I do not wish you to disturb it. 
My opinions on those subjects are made up ; I will 
hear nothing more." This, too, is a pitiable case for 
any human soul. It is more than pitiable ; the soul 
that assumes this attitude puts itself in virtual alli- 
ance with the Gospel's deadliest foes. The Son of 
God was crucified simply for disturbing men's con- 
victions, for telling the Pharisees that grace and 
truth were greater than mint and anise and cum- 
min. All such as these are lovers of themselves 
rather than lovers of truth. They may be out- 
wardly respectable, useful members of society, even 
of the church, but they know nothing of that im- 
mortal race which the soul is called to run. They 
have no sympathy with those devout inquirers to 
whom only is vouchsafed the open vision. We can 
afford, then, to pass these by, as having no possible 
connection with our text. What do they care for a 
guide into all truth t 

But there are those (and I speak here not of elect 
and consecrated souls, the Bernards, the Pascals, 
Miltons, the heavenly flowers of our common man- 
hood, whose yearnings have become histories, but 



364 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

of humbler spirits) there are those, I say, whose 
love of truth is sincere and earnest ; who are neither 
sunk in worldliness, nor blinded with complacency ; 
but who, realizing that they only know in part, are 
ready to welcome a Guide that shall bring them 
to the mark of their high calling. Among these 
have been arrayed some of whom the world was 
not worthy. They are not always among the pop- 
ular leaders of mankind ; the Great Captain himself 
was not. They have often been mistrusted and 
suspected by their age ; they have been in peril 
often, not only with the heathen, but far more with 
their own countrymen. In rude ages they have 
been beaten and burned at the stake, in more pol- 
ished times they have been stabbed with the tongue. 
As preachers of the Gospel they have not met with 
the great outward success which follows the mere 
flatterers of sects, and fomenters of party prejudice, 
but when in the end of the years the world gathers 
up her jewels, these will shine like the stars forever 
and ever ! 

It is such as these who alone feel the full force 
of the inevitable questions : " How shall I know the 
truth ? " ** By what test shall I separate it from 
error .^^ " " How shall I be assured that my search 
is not in vain } " At the first step the inquiring 
soul is immersed in this troubled sea. The air is 
filled with the war of opposing faiths, and the more 
vital the interests at stake the more bitter and ir- 
reconcilable seem the contradictions. A mind so 
made that it runs on without reflection in the ruts 
into which it once has fallen, receiving without 
question the opinions that happen to prevail in the 
region where Providence has placed it, will find no 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 365 

difficulty here ; but a mind large enough to look 
abroad, keen enough to scan the broad discrepancies 
in men's opinions, cannot but yearn for some fixed 
and abiding standard, by which unchanging truth 
may be distinguished from human errors. 

What, then, shall that standard be ? Shall it be 
the human reason ? Some have said so, and have 
refused to own any other guide. " For what," they 
ask, " is the god-like gift imparted, but for this very 
end .^ " "Why has the Creator endowed us with 
these faculties, that raise us to such superb preemi- 
nence above the brute creation, that lead us in such 
airy flights through all the years, and beyond the 
flaming walls of space, but to launch us in this ad- 
venturous voyage } " " Is it not by the exercise of 
reason," it is further asked, " that man has taken 
every step in his onward march } Is it not by con- 
fiding in this guide that he has mastered the mys- 
teries of nature, subjugated the obedient elements, 
made the winged lightning, even, his willing mes- 
senger.? Is it not by reason that all his knowl- 
edge has been built up } Can there be any other 
path to still undiscovered truth } Can there be any 
other sign than this by which we can guess the un- 
known ? " 

To a fair mind no cant is more disgusting than 
that which seeks to exalt religion by depreciating 
reason. A few phrases of the Apostle, misunder- 
stood and misapplied, have been the favorite watch- 
words of all such as know not how to prize one gift 
of the Almighty, save by disparaging another; as 
though (to borrow an illustration from John Locke) 
in order to use a telescope it was first necessary to 
put out our eyes. Let us willingly concede to rea- 



366 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH 

son whatever is her due. Let us confess her impe- 
rial and victorious sway over the provinces legiti- 
mately hers. Let us not believe that faith can be 
effectually confirmed by making man a fool. But 
still, is there not something more } Does the ex- 
perience of the past assure us that unaided human 
reason can settle beyond dispute the questions that 
most harass and perplex the soul } Has it been the 
unerring guide we want.? I use the term '^reason" 
here in its ordinary sense, not as the universal, but 
as the individual reason ; not the eternal law and 
principle of all things, the wisdom established from 
everlasting, but simply the human faculty, the pro- 
cess by which the finite understanding advances 
from premiss to conclusion. Does this reason, by 
which we investigate with such success the laws of 
nature, does this serve us as well in those higher 
reaches to which the spirit soars } 

'' But can I know anything," it may be still ob- 
jected, " that I do not arrive at in this way ^ Do I 
not become a sheer dreamer or enthusiast } Am I 
not involved in infinite uncertainties as soon as I 
forsake this guide ? " The question, then, simply 
reduces itself to this : Shall I stop at this point, 
beyond which my reason cannot securely tread .-* 
Shall I abandon what lies beyond, and give myself 
no concern but for that truth which can be dem- 
onstrated to the understanding } But to do this is 
to abandon what man wants most to know. The 
deep, enduring thirst that the soul feels is pre- 
cisely for the truth that lies beyond this bound ; 
not for the knowledge of mere natural things, but 
of those deeper spiritual mysteries that concern the 
soul's highest duty and destiny. To put these things 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 367 

aside as lying beyond the range of legitimate in- 
quiry is in itself a virtual confession that unaided 
human reason is not a sufficient guide. But besides 
this there are truths lodged in human consciousness 
that claim supernatural sanction, — truths that rest 
on revelation ; what relation has reason to such 
truth as this ? Much of this truth is not only desti- 
tute of demonstration, but seems in its nature inca- 
pable of being demonstrated to finite comprehension. 
How shall I decide whether this is indeed the truth 
of God or the myth and tradition of a bygone age ? 
Why, in short, shall I receive the Bible and reject 
the Vedas and the Koran ? 

Is it strange that with these questions multiplying 
so thick upon them, and receiving on every side such 
various answers, men at last should begin to ask 
whether reason be indeed a sufficient guide to all 
these mysteries, — whether, by any searching, un- 
aided man could find the solution of these problems ? 
Is it strange that some have said with Pilate, "What 
is truth ? " half doubting whether the human mind 
can ever rise above this conflict of opinion ? 

One extreme runs directly to another. From ex- 
alting human reason as. the sole and sufficient stand- 
ard men next demand an authority that shall con- 
strain the reason. The spectacle has come to be too 
common to attract much notice, of those who had as- 
serted the extremest use of reason and exhausted all 
their rhetoric in praise of a liberal and progressive 
Christianity, deserting their old allies, to find a rest- 
ing-place beneath the wings of a traditional ecclesi- 
asticism. I can fully understand such men. I can 
hardly find it in my heart to blame them. The nat- 
ural condition of the soul is trust. It loves to con- 



368 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

fide in a power above itself. It loves to feel that a 
mightier arm encircles it. This state of blind sub- 
mission, even to church authority, is a truer and 
nobler state than that reckless and defiant indepen- 
dence that will acknowledge nothing above itself, — 
that measures by its own ignorance eternal truth. 
Soon as experience shows that reason is not suffi- 
cient men say we must have some other guide. 
The soul soon wearies of being at the mercy of 
qyery wind. It longs to be at rest beneath the 
protecting shadow of something about which there 
can be no dispute. It craves a rod and a staff on 
which it may securely lean ; sick of endless contro- 
versy, despairing of any solid result, it at last cries 
out, " Lead me to a rock that is higher than I ! " 
Some may be led by selfish motives to identify 
themselves with a church that has with it respecta- 
bility and dignity and weight of years ; some, doubt- 
less, are attracted by mere outward trappings, by 
the pomp and ceremonial that ages have silvered 
o'er with a solemn grandeur; some, even by the small 
social pride of seeming to be select and different 
from the mass ; but I can well understand how sin- 
cere and earnest minds should be driven by their 
own inward struggles to this result, and I doubt not 
that among those who have thus willingly renounced 
the right of private judgment, and confided them- 
selves and their dearest hopes to the keeping of an 
infallible church, have been some of the truest and 
purest spirits of our time. How often the soul of 
an honest and an earnest man, seeking on the one 
hand to be true to himself while on the other he 
seeks the supreme and perfect truth, is forced to 
murmur, " Oh that I had wings like a dove, that I 
might fly away and be at rest ! " 



THE HOL Y SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH 369 

Complacent Protestants sneer at the Church of 
Rome ; they marvel why she holds her sway over 
the souls of men. But the Church of Rome em- 
bodies the deepest yearnings and instincts of human 
nature. She stands up in grand parallel with ten- 
dencies that are universal as man himself. What 
may seem her most arrogant and abhorrent claims 
are precisely what is yielded with most grateful sat- 
isfaction. She meets those wants that every per- 
plexed thinker at times must feel. The Church of 
Rome, claiming, as she does, to rest on that Rock 
against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, ut- 
tering an unerring wisdom, clothed with infallibil- 
ity, going back in the unbroken succession of her 
bishops to apostolic days, carrying the same rites 
and ritual to every nation under heaven, speaking 
in one language to learned and unlearned, rich and 
poor, barbarian, bond, and free, — meets and satis- 
fies these yearnings of the soul for some authority 
that shall forever still its doubts. How easy would 
it be to swell the list of most devout, most logical, 
most earnest thinkers of this century who have 
been driven to this extreme by their profound ex- 
perience of the insufficiency of human reason, — 
who see no order and stability in society, no peace 
and hope for man save in unqualified submission to 
church authority. It is not a sign of weakness and 
imbecility, but a mighty instinct of the soul that 
leads it thus to worship and obey. 

" But," it is said, on the other hand, " in this very 
surrender of private judgment, must I not exercise 
my judgment.? I want nothing more than that ab- 
solute authority ; but how shall I know that I have 
found it ? Some tell me the Scriptures are suffi- 
24 



370 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

cient ; but when the meaning of Scripture is in 
doubt, how shall I be assured of an infallible inter- 
pretation ? If the church interpret, where shall I 
find the church ?. Shall I find it in Rome or in Ge- 
neva or in Oxford ? Shall I follow the successor of 
St. Peter or the mouth-piece of some petty sect ? " 

So, then, we round the circle. The unaided rea- 
son is not a sufficient guide ; experience shows that, 
trusting to this alone, we are hopelessly adrift on a 
sea of errors ; so long as each individual makes his 
own opinion the single standard there can be no 
judgment absolute and final. Neither is outward 
authority a sufficient rule ; for in the very act of 
deferring to such authority we are forced to exercise 
that individual reason which we abjure. What, then, 
is man's position } How shall he ever draw the line 
between the true and false .'' How shall he ever 
reach an assured conviction respecting these great 
questions on which his peace depends } How shall 
he ever pass from darkness, uncertainty, and igno- 
rance to serene and cloudless day.'* If he cannot 
follow the light of his own understanding, — if he 
cannot follow the light of tradition and authority, — 
what else shall serve him as a light to his feet and 
as a lamp to his path } 

Or is he meant to live in endless doubt } This 
latter supposition may be dismissed as inconceiva- 
ble. We cannot for one moment be persuaded that 
He who dwelleth in perfect light, and in whom is 
no darkness at all, should have doomed the human 
soul to this dreary destiny ; that He, who at so many 
times and in such divers manners, in the utterances 
of day and night, in the teaching of the written 
word, has declared his truth, should have destined 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 37 1 

his creatures to remain always ignorant of it. And 
much as we may dispute respecting Scripture teach- 
ing there can be no dispute respecting this, that the 
Scriptures not only represent the soul as created to 
know the truth, but represent this knowledge as its 
only enduring peace and satisfaction ; we cannot, 
then, believe that doubt and darkness are meant 
always to fold their cheerless wings about it, that it 
has been left wholly without a guide. But where 
shall that guide be found } If I read aright the last 
words of promise uttered by our Lord to his sor- 
rowing disciples, the soul has that guide, — a guide 
implanted in it for this very purpose, a guide that 
cannot err, a guide that rises supreme over human 
ignorance and human prejudice, a guide that is in- 
dependent of traditional authority, that shall guide 
the willing and trusting soul into the perfect truth. 

So I read the great promise of the text. If lan- 
guage has any meaning these words must mean that 
the soul, yearning to be set free from doubt and error, 
is not left without a comforter ; they must mean that 
He who created man to know the truth has pro- 
vided a new and better way by which he may follow 
after it, — that in the light of this latter day that has 
dawned upon the soul, it is meant that the gloomy 
shapes that have so long beleaguered it shall be 
made forever to flee away. " Howbeit, when he, 
the Spirit of truth, is come," said Jesus, ^' he will 
guide you into all truth." Can language be more 
explicit ? Can we conceive an answer more direct 
and satisfying to those questions that have so per- 
plexed us ? Is there not here a divine provision in- 
dicated for these very wants and yearnings of the 
soul ? Tossed on the restless sea of doubt, closed 



372 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

about with the night of darkness, sinking, it may be, 
in deep waters, is not this the outstretched hand ? 

Of course it was not our Saviour's meaning that 
his followers should be made omniscient ; the trans- 
lation here is liable to leave a wrong impression. 
Instead of reading, *' He will guide you into all 
truth," we might better read, " He will guide you 
into the whole truth ; " that is, not all truth of what- 
ever sort, but that truth involved in the mission of 
the Redeemer, and in our relation to Him ; for the 
Holy Ghost is not given to guide us to that knowl- 
edge which mere natural reason comprises, but He is 
to take of the things of Christ and show them unto 
us. The best comment on this mystery of the new 
creation is furnished in the apostolic writings. ' They 
teach, with unanimous consent, that the Holy Spirit 
dwells in regenerate souls ; that by this indwelling 
the individual spirit becomes identified with the 
universal spirit ; that the finite reason is merged 
and blended with the infinite ; that not by limiting, 
but by enlarging human freedom the child of God 
is made to think and know and feel in accord with 
his divine Original. Words need not be multiplied 
in proof of this. It would only be to reiterate the 
whole scope and tenor of the Epistles. He surely 
misses what is most significant in the new dispen- 
sation who does not recognize this all-pervading 
principle. The whole consciousness of apostolic 
teaching rested on this assurance that a Spirit dwelt 
within the soul which guided it to a knowledge of 
the truth. Nor did the Apostles restrict this inward 
guidance to themselves ; they imparted it to all be- 
lievers. In the splendid figure of the Apostle the 
body of the believer was represented as the temple 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH 373 

of the Holy Ghost. As in the temple round which 
have hovered such sacred recollections, the Sheki- 
nah had abode, attesting with visible splendor the 
actual presence of Jehovah, so in these living tem- 
ples abode that eternal Spirit which was the Light of 
men, shedding its resplendent glory, not over out- 
ward gifts and sacrifices, but over the better offer- 
ings of a penitent and believing heart. This was 
the true Light that should light every man. The 
Spirit which convinced the soul of sin and right- 
eousness and judgment did not then forsake it, to 
grope its way alone. The same power which turned 
from darkness unto light led to the perfect day. 
Once wedded to his living Head, the believer could 
never again be left alone. The Good Shepherd did 
not desert his sheep. Leaving them, He left be- 
hind another Witness, that should witness to the 
human soul the unchanging truth of God. 

Does the question still arise, Shall we recognize 
this inward Witness } How shall we guard ourselves 
from error here better than before } How shall we 
separate this spiritual guidance from our own na- 
tive promptings } Are we not here involved in new 
and greater difficulties } 

The answer given by Scripture to these questions 
is explicit. It is not meant that we should be left 
in any doubt respecting this. To have been left so 
would have defeated every purpose for which the 
guide was given. The sufficing evidence of the in- 
ward presence of this guide is the conviction that 
itself awakens. This conviction may be as strong 
as the conviction of personal identity. Paul never 
doubted this inward guidance ; he could no more 
doubt it than doubt his own existence. The meas- 



374 ^^^ HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

ure of the gift will always be the measure of the 
conviction of it. The soul can be as much assured 
of the shining of this inner light as it can be assured 
by the outward eye that the day breaks and the shad- 
ows flee away. It is striking to observe how those 
who stand farthest removed from resting religion 
upon individual conviction, who assert most strongly 
the authority of external standards, yet in their 
deeper moods fall back instinctively on this inner 
guide. We know in our language no more emphatic 
utterance of this trust than those touching lines of 
Newman, dear to all tried and doubting souls : — 

*' Lead, kindly I>ight, amid th' encircling gloom, 
Lead Thou me on ; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 
Lead Thou me on." 

The sense of this divine guidance made the first 
preachers of the Gospel preach it with such unfal- 
tering lips. This inward assurance was their sole 
authority. Not of man, nor by man, but by the 
Holy Ghost ; not by power of human reason, not 
by ecclesiastical traditions, but by the living Spirit. 
Can we conceive of any conviction that could be 
stronger than was theirs, that any guidance could 
be more distinctly felt than that which guided them } 

And was there any limit to the promise } Was 
it only to the Apostles or to the apostolic age that 
this guide was given } Does man now need it any 
less ; can it not now as well as then make its abode 
within him } Do we doubt that if we to-day desire 
the truth with the simple, fervent yearning with 
which they desired it, if we receive it with the same 
humble, child-like trust with which they received it, 
that the Holy Ghost will dwell in us less richly than 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH, 375 

it dwelt in them ? Here, then, we have the solution, 
and the only possible solution, of the great conflict 
between authority and reason. Reason is not in the 
least abjured. Rather is reason here first raised 
to its rightful sphere. Reason is purged and clari- 
fied ; the individual reason becomes the universal ; 
the indwelling light illumines all its functions. It 
is made a trusty, unerring guide, because it acts 
no longer by its mere blinded instincts, but is made 
partaker of all the fullness of God. 

Nor, on the other hand, is authority in the least 
impugned. On the contrary, here is established an 
authority absolutely binding ; here is revealed a 
guide to be followed at all hazards ; here is set up a 
standard infallible, imperial, unchanging. Never 
may the soul renounce these claims, never may it 
utter a protest against this rule. This is the very 
voice of God that speaks within it. The wisdom 
that was set up from everlasting, before ever the 
world was made perpetually enriches it with all 
counsel and all knowledge. 

The operation of this inward guide saves the soul 
from false extremes. It teaches man first of all to 
look within, to follow the inner light, to hearken to 
the inner voice, to be loyal to his own conviction of 
truth and duty ; but it teaches him not less to re- 
spect the convictions of all good men, to remember 
always that they too are guided by the same unerr- 
ing guide, to act not apart from them, but in the 
unity of one spirit to acknowledge one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism. In this sense the church is 
infallible. The Spirit is continually guiding it. So 
far as good men are illumined by this indwelling 
light they cannot err. That truth, therefore, in 



3/6 THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH. 

which all good men agree, which is attested by the 
common experience and faith and hope of all, is 
invested with divine authority. The voice of this 
unanimous conviction is not the voice of man. It 
is the Holy Ghost that speaks to us in this as clearly, 
as unmistakably, as it spake of yore by the voice of 
prophets and apostles. We shrink now from ac- 
cepting the lesson of our text in all its fullness. We 
cannot receive the promises of Christ in their sim- 
ple, natural meaning. Instead of trusting with per- 
fect faith to the guidance of this inward light, we 
fall back on outward supports and hug the traditions' 
of men. So around us rages the unappeased strife 
of authority and reason. But when I see on every 
side the upheavals of opinion, when I see how un- 
settled everywhere are men's convictions, how pow- 
erless in defense of truth seem human arguments, 
how slow and impeded is the growth of that king- 
dom which is destined to cover the whole earth, I 
can almost believe that the present must make way 
for another and greater dispensation ; that the King 
of Glory must return in sublimer, more triumphant 
exhibitions of spiritual power ; that the failure of 
all present means is only meant to pave the way 
for a presence of the Spirit, before which the very 
mountains and hills shall break forth into singing. 

And, lastly, we may learn from this study the tem- 
per with which alone we can seek the truth aright. 
The condition of success is not intellectual, but 
moral. What we want is not great mental keenness, 
nor learning, nor logical skill, but an humble, pa- 
tient, docile spirit. We do not ourselves discover 
the whole truth ; we are guided into it. The more 
we can put ourselves in sympathy with that spiritual 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GUIDE TO TRUTH 377 

guide, the more we can throw aside the pride of 
opinion, the love of sect or of self, that holds us back 
from entire surrender to it, and yield ourselves with 
simple, child-like trust to the divine influence that 
is acting on our hearts, the sooner shall we come to 
a perfect knowledge. "Learn of me," said the 
great Teacher," for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
Learning this first and greatest lesson, the humblest 
soul may say at last, " I thank Thee, O Father, 
Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid 
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast re- 
vealed them unto babes." 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY 
GHOST.i 



For John truly baptized with water ; but ye shall be baptized 
with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. — Acts i. 5. 

These were the last words of promise spoken by 
our Lord to his disciples just before the clouds 
veiled his ascending form forever from their sight. 
They gave the final sanction to a long series of 
prophetic intimations that his work would receive 
its completion in a new outpouring of the divine 
Spirit upon men. In his discourse on the night be- 
fore He was betrayed He had distinctly taught 
them that the great work which He had assumed 
would not be completed by his death. That was not 
the last result towards which all things had tended, 
but was itself the transition step to a greater result, 
the necessary condition of another and more glo- 
rious stage of spiritual development, the door of a 
nearer approach to the invisible world. The sadness 
of his farewell address was relieved by the assur- 
ance that it was expedient that He should go away. 
After He had gone, a Comforter would come who 
would abide with them forever. This Comforter 
was the Holy Ghost. 

1 Written in 1878. 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 379 

All distinctive Christian teaching centres in the 
three cardinal conceptions of the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. The essential and insepara- 
ble relation of these three conceptions was affirmed 
in the great command of Christ when He bade his 
disciples go forth and teach all nations, baptizing 
them into this single and indivisible name. With 
each application of the symbolic water, which signi- 
fied the translation of a believer from the kingdom 
of darkness into the kingdom of light, was solemnly 
reiterated the mysterious formula which drew the 
line between the gospel and all other forms of re- 
ligion. Of the three correlated truths expressed 
in this formula, that relating to the Holy Ghost 
was not only the last in order, but the last revealed. 
Some faith in a divine influence exerted on the 
soul had been, it is true, a part of every religion, 
and the comforting doctrine that the eternal spirit 
at times conversed with man, and that in rapt mo- 
ments of ecstatic vision the soul pierced the veil 
that rounds off our little lives and was lifted to com- 
panionship with the invisible powers, played a large 
part in that elder dispensation of which Christianity 
was in some important respects the outgrowth. In 
this sense the doctrine of the Holy Ghost was no 
new revelation. But where the teachings of Christ 
respecting the Comforter who was to come, departed 
from earlier conceptions, was in the distinct repre- 
sentation that He made of the new mode in which 
this spiritual power would work. It was not a new 
spirit that was to be poured out upon them, but it 
would be poured out in a new way. Through the 
kings and prophets of the old dispensation its work- 
ing had been sporadic and exceptional. It had come 



380 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 

to them at intervals. Its visitations had been rare 
and eminent exhibitions of supernatural power. Only 
a favored few had been selected as its ministering 
agents. But in the new spiritual realm about to be 
established all this would be changed. The baptism 
of the Spirit would no longer be restricted to a se- 
lect class. All who truly believed in the Lord Jesus 
Christ would be counted worthy to receive it. Its 
consecration set apart no exclusive hierarchy, but 
each redeemed soul in the inherent nobility and 
greatness of a spiritual priesthood would shine with 
its mystic chrism. It would abide in the church as 
the normal and permanent law of its growth. It 
formed the definite ground-work and constitution of 
that new kingdom which was not meat and drink, 
but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost. 

The earlier teachings of our Lord did not touch 
distinctly on this final, consummate truth. At the 
very beginning of his ministry He contented him- 
self with the command that men should follow Him. 
For only by willing surrender of all that they had, 
by full renunciation of all selfish plans of personal 
indulgence or ambition, and by a daily companion- 
ship, by seeing his works, by testing the truth of his 
words, could they enter on the great path of a 
genuine discipleship. Thus were they prepared 
for clearer teachings ; for the parables in which the 
mystery of the kingdom of heaven was set forth 
to the disciples, but not to the world. But not 
even then were they ready for the whole truth. 
Not till the solemn crisis of his career, not till the 
dark night when they were gathered about Him 
in the upper chamber, when at the very table was 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 38 1 

seated the one who so soon should betray Him, did 
Jesus disclose the deeper mystery of the soul's re- 
lation to the spiritual world. Not till then, in the 
pathetic chapters the whole meaning of which seems 
still to elude our most earnest study, did He ven- 
ture to depict the grand outlines of that eternal 
kingdom of spiritual light and life and peace which 
no malice of man nor violence of earthly foes could 
ever invade or destroy. 

And as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was the 
last which our Lord revfealed, so it has been the 
hardest for his disciples to comprehend. The truths 
of the Father and of the Son, however illimitable 
the lines of speculation which they opened, in their 
general outline appealed more directly to human 
comprehension. That God was our Father ; that 
He cared for us with even more than the love with 
which a human father cares for his child ; that He 
was even more ready to give good gifts to them 
that asked them ; that his ear was never deaf to 
our petitions, was a conception that even the young- 
est could comprehend. That the only-begotten Son 
was the Saviour of the world ; that his lowly walk 
among the neglected and despised of earth was a 
manifestation of more than human love ; that his 
whole self-denying life was a sacrifice for us ; that 
his death on the cross was a perfect example of sub- 
mission to the divine will, were truths appealing for 
evidence to undoubted historic facts, — to facts tell- 
ing the story of redemption in language more intel- 
ligible than Hebrew, or Latin, or Greek. But the 
doctrine of the Spirit was one that in its nature 
could only be spiritually discerned. It could not 
be conveyed by any of the ordinary methods of in- 



382 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 

struction, but must be understood and felt by an in- 
ward and personal experience. 

Hence, that part of Christian doctrine which re- 
lates to the Father and the Son has always supplied 
the principal topics of theological discussion. Re- 
specting the nature and attributes of God whole 
libraries have been written. The proofs of the divine 
existence have been examined and reexamined, till 
in the din of conflicting views the most sober think- 
ers have begun to doubt whether the human mind 
is capable of framing any logical demonstration 
that this mighty frame of things had any origin in 
creative mind. In the same way, what theologians 
have called the plan of redemption has been dis- 
sected with all the confidence with which science 
investigates the phenomena of matter. The most 
signal, pathetic, persuasive exhibition of yearning 
love for men ever compassed within the limits of a 
human life has been analyzed into dry, repulsive 
syllogisms, and summed up in the metaphysical dia- 
lect of creeds, and made the shibboleths of contend- 
ing sects. For even the story of redemption could 
be easily perverted into an abstract theory of the 
divine administration. But when we study the doc- 
trine of the Spirit we pass from the theology of the 
intellect to the theology of the feelings. The ways 
of the Spirit lend themselves less readily to the 
formulas of logic. We are in a region of insight, 
of experience, of inner recognition, where intellectual 
conclusions no longer satisfy. 

We can never grasp the Christian doctrine of the 
Holy Ghost if we simply or mainly regard it as a 
dogma of theology. We only deceive ourselves if 
we seek to define it to the understanding ; we can 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 383 

never search out the Spirit by vain attempts to 
trace back its timeless beginning ; we only perplex 
faith by raising questions about the relations in the 
Godhead, and by vain disputes respecting persons 
and processions. The last discourse of our Lord, 
so pervaded in every sentence vv^ith this comforting 
truth, says nothing of these things. The work of 
the Spirit is practical ; its operation is within the 
limits of human experience. The question for us 
is not its eternal relation to the uncreated source 
of all things, but its manifestation in our lives. 
We are in a region where we need to tread with 
caution, where we are easily misled, where the 
most wholesome and life-giving truths lie danger- 
ously near the most disastrous error, but yet a region 
where the soul breathes its native air, and where it 
finds its highest satisfaction. We enter here the 
inner sanctuary of Christian faith ; we tread the true 
holy of holies, where we see no longer as in a glass, 
but with open face. Of all born among the sons 
of women there was not a greater than John the 
Baptist ; yet John baptized only with water, while 
we are baptized with the Holy Ghost. 

In calling attention to a few of the more obvi- 
ous conclusions to be derived from this supreme 
article of revealed truth, let us observe : — 

I. That the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
rests throughout on the great fact that there is be- 
tween the human soul and its Maker an inner con- 
tact and relationship which the ordinary laws of 
intellectual action do not explain. It most unmis- 
takably means that there are interior spiritual rela- 
tions, capable of being recognized in a personal ex- 
perience, attesting themselves to the soul as a part 



384 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 

of its life, of which the grosser external senses can 
take no note. Nothing can be plainer than the 
teachings of our Lord upon this point. He com- 
forts his disciples with the assurance that they shall 
receive from the Father a Spirit whom the world 
cannot receive, — a Spirit who shall dwell in them ; 
who shall teach them all things ; who shall give the 
inward testimony of the truth of his sayings ; who 
will show them things to come. Such sayings can 
have no meaning save on the assumption of a di- 
rect influence exerted upon the soul by the powers 
of the invisible world. Any interpretation short of 
this reduces to cruel mockery the most solemn, the 
most pathetic, the most precise, teachings of the Son 
of Man. 

Here we have, then, revealed on the one hand the 
capacity of the infinite Spirit to bring itself within 
the limit of human consciousness, and on the other 
the capacity of the finite spirit to come into imme- 
diate communion with its Maker. We have at once 
the highest truth that can be grasped by human in- 
telligence and the highest experience that can be 
tasted by the human soul. We have the assurance 
that there is no middle wall of partition between 
man and God ; that, made in the image of God, 
man is capable of directly recognizing God, of com- 
ing into conscious personal contact with Him whom 
no man has seen at any time. With the psycho- 
logical problems involved in this proposition we 
need not perplex ourselves. The great Teacher 
does not seek to explain them ; it may be that we 
are not capable of understanding any explanation 
were it made. We have never yet solved the prob- 
lem how we know anything at all ; how the impres- 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 385 

sions of the senses are made the possession of the 
soul. We can only rest in the fact, — a fact not 
simply attested by the personal consciousness of 
the individual, but finding its verification in the In- 
carnation of our Lord ; for what was that, consid- 
ered in its deeper meaning, but a publication of the 
great truth that the divine Spirit can dwell in 
man ? 

And bearing in mind that this immediate contact 
of the finite and infinite Spirit is presented to us 
by our Lord as the ultimate and supreme result of 
religious experience ; that the long line of supernat- 
ural influences that stretched from the call of Abra- 
ham, in the dawn of patriarchal story, on to the 
Day of Pentecost, was but the ordered preparation 
for this final access of the soul to its highest life, 
we are brought directly to the conclusion that re- 
ligion in its most perfected form is this inner ex- 
perience ; that the soul wins its closest access to 
spiritual things in this sphere of feeUng and inner 
intuition. In other words, this is to say that re- 
ligious belief in its highest form has its origin and 
foundation in religious intuition ; that it lies back 
of the ordinary intellectual processes by which the 
understanding arrives at truth ; and that it does not 
appeal to the tests by which the ordinary conclu- 
sions of the understanding are verified. The im- 
pulse, the guidance, the illumination, by which the 
soul is enabled to rest in its supreme convictions 
of spiritual things are due to a direct contact of the 
soul with something distinct from and above itself ; 
a power making itself felt in recesses of our being 
far removed from the familiar commerce of life. 

It has been asserted by a famous writer that 
25 



386 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST, 

the human mind passes through three successive 
stages : that, beginning with the conscious feeUng of 
dependence upon a higher power from which all re- 
ligion springs, it passes next to a stage where it is 
held in thrall by its metaphysical conceptions, emerg- 
ing at last into the cold, clear air, where it accepts 
nothing that science cannot demonstrate by a rigid 
process of induction. But this ignores man's high- 
est aptitudes. The right method of human progress 
is not to pass from the sphere of feeling to the 
sphere of mere intellectual cognition ; but when man 
is at his best estate, when he has reached his am- 
plest growth, when he is in the fullest exercise of 
all his faculties, then it is that he is capable of 
feeling most deeply, and then it is that his feelings, 
that is the affirmations of his moral nature, may 
be most confidently relied upon as a guide to truth. 
Here is seen the profound meaning of the Saviour's 
maxim that whosoever would enter the kingdom of 
heaven must receive it as a little child. For child- 
hood is the period when we are most under the sway 
of feeling ; when the heart is most capable of being 
touched, attracted, transformed, by whatever is higher 
and better than itself. Then it is we hear divine 
voices most distinctly. 

Nor is it a skeptical philosophy alone that has 
misconceived this point. The Christian church has 
many times been betrayed into the same error. 
When saving faith has been confounded with the 
recognition of certain intellectual formulas, when 
the progress of truth has been measured by mere 
precision of dogmatic statements, and the growth of 
simple and undefiled religion has been argued from 
the success of theologians in framing systems of 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 38/ 

divinity, then surely has the most distinctive feature 
of the gospel been overlooked, — that in its highest 
form it is something to be felt, and that the things 
hid from the wise and the prudent are revealed to 
babes. 

And let us never forget the inestimable service 
rendered in an age of dry, dogmatic controversy by 
the religious body which revived, in modern times, 
the almost forgotten doctrine of the Holy Ghost. 
It is said that the Society of Friends is gradually 
passing away. They can ill be spared from the 
household of faith. But should they become extinct 
as a sect it will be only because their mission is ac- 
complished. The great cardinal truth of the Chris- 
tian system to which they called attention, which 
kindled the enthusiasm of Fox and moved the elo- 
quence of Barclay, must appeal to human souls with 
increased power as the years roll on, or Christianity 
itself will become but as sounding brass and tink- 
ling cymbal. 

2. As the doctrine of the Holy Spirit sets before 
us the origin and foundation of all religious belief, 
so at the same time it supplies the law of religious 
growth. In its essence, religion is life. 

In Scripture the two words are constantly in- 
terchanged as synonyms. The Founder of our re- 
ligion came on earth that we might have life. In 
Him was life, and this life was the light of men. 
And in language even more emphatic we are warned 
that he that hath the Son hath life, while he that 
hath not the Son of God shall not see life. Faith 
in Christ, whatever else may be said of it, is first of 
all a hving principle implanted in the soul. But the 
characteristic of all life is growth. It is the law of 



388 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

the natural world, — a law illustrated afresh as each 
new season salutes us with the green grass and the 
budding leaf and the song of birds ; it is even more 
the law of the spiritual world, of whose unseen agen- 
cies and potencies external nature is only the type 
and semblance ; so that when we define religion as 
consisting essentially in a devout temper of mind 
we do not exclude, but include, the possibility of 
enlargement and elevation and enrichment. Be- 
cause religion lies so near the centre of being must 
it be, in its very nature, a most stimulating and po- 
tent principle of growth. 

But what is the law of the soul's growth ? How 
is the germ planted in the inner life carried on 
through the successive stages of its development, 
till at last it ripens into the full-grown and perfect 
man ? Is it left to itself, — left to its own unaided 
strength, to the uncertain light of its own experience, 
to the feeble efforts which itself is capable of mak- 
ing in the long race it has to run and in the inces- 
sant wrestling, it must keep up with foes without and 
foes within, — or is it helped and quickened and 
strengthened by a power above itself, and led in the 
illumined pathway of a divine guidance ? 

On this point, too, there is no room for doubt re- 
specting the Master's teachings. The sayings of 
our Lord are clear and positive. The soul once 
brought into inner and immediate contact with a 
divine power and life is never left to itself. It is 
meant to live on in the joy and strength of this un- 
checked communion. Having once found access to 
the hoUest of all, it does not go out from this bliss- 
ful society. The gift of the Holy Ghost is always 
described as an indwelling and perpetual giit ; not 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 389 

simply one original impulse given to the soul, but a 
ceaselessly acting principle, a dwelling of the divine 
life in the believing and obedient soul. 

This indwelling Spirit is held up to us as the 
operative principle of all genuine religious progress. 
And herein lies the distinction between religious 
and intellectual growth. The advance we make in 
the discovery of mere natural truth is through the 
cultivation and right exercise of our mere natural 
faculties. We move forward securely by making use 
of rational methods. The keenness of our intellect- 
ual perceptions, the logical correlation of the con- 
ceptions which the understanding frames, are the 
conditions of all successful searching into the se- 
crets of the external universe. So we measure the 
courses of the stars, and note the subtle affinities 
of physical force. But when we turn our inspec- 
tion in upon the secret springs of life and action, 
when we set clearly before us our conscious self, 
and ponder the mystery of our personal being, we 
come into a more mysterious and sacred presence. 
Amid the deep foundations of our spiritual nature, 
we are forced to recognize the working of forces, 
the analysis of which eludes our ordinary methods. 
We are confronted with problems and stirred with 
questionings which do not yield to the famiHar 
methods which we have applied with so much suc- 
cess in a different sphere. The primary condition 
of progress is not so much clear perception as a 
right temper of heart. 

The function of the Spirit in guiding the soul of 
man is therefore primarily made effectual in chang- 
ing the inner disposition. It is in the sphere of 
feeling, as we have already seen, that we He nearest 



390 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

the centre of light and truth, and it is through the 
moral disposition or temper that we are directly 
acted upon by the illuminating power whose office 
it is to guide us into all truth. The first step is 
here ; and only by effecting a change in this inner 
man can the divine Spirit bring us into that right 
relation to the spiritual world which is the indispen- 
sable condition of all progress in the knowledge of 
spiritual things. But man is so made that his inner 
operations cannot be divided. There is an under- 
lying unity of being, in which his moral and his in- 
tellectual life are both included. The heart and the 
mind exert a reflex influence, and the healthfulness 
of one makes itself directly felt upon the other also. 
Hence, the effecting of a right temper of heart car- 
ries with it a clearer intellectual perception, and 
faith passes by an inherent and necessary law from 
the sphere of mere feeling to the sphere of rational 
cognition. The soul cannot be deeply stirred on 
any subject without having the intellectual faculties 
at once roused to new activity. 

How far the teachings of Christ authorize us to 
regard the Holy Spirit as a direct source of intel- 
lectual illumination I will not undertake to say. 
We know so little of the nature and origin of these 
internal changes of mental state, in which lies the 
explanation of what we call conceptions or ideas, that 
any mere affirmation or denial would be little to the 
purpose. While one school of philosophers insists 
on regarding them as the mere result of physical 
modifications of the brain's structure, another sees 
in them unmistakable tokens of a divine agency; but 
the problem seems as far from being solved as in 
the day when the earliest thinkers began to study 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 39 1 

it. The promise of our Lord, " Howbeit when he, 
the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into 
all truth," seems, indeed, at first sight broad enough 
to cover the most extreme hypothesis ; yet I do 
not understand these words to mean all truth, of 
whatever sort, but only that truth pertaining directly 
to his own work and teachings. So, at least, the 
context would seem to show; for the Spirit, He adds 
directly after, shall take of the things of mine, and 
shall show them unto you ; so that the office of the 
Spirit is not to guide the mind into truth which its 
unaided faculties are competent to explore, but 
simply into truth pertaining to the supersensuous 
and unseen world. 

We do not for a moment suppose that the Holy 
Spirit is promised as a guide in mere scientific re- 
search. The Creator has endowed us with powers 
ample for all purposes of intellectual investigation, 
and He has spread around us and above us the infin- 
ite solicitations of the external world, that these 
powers might be stimulated to highest development. 
The astronomer would be mad indeed who should 
throw aside his optic glass, and seek divine commu- 
nications respecting the position of one of the heav- 
enly bodies. We have no assurance which would 
authorize us to expect that God will do for us what 
He has given us power to do ourselves. Nor have 
we any more reason to suppose that when we apply 
to divine truth our metaphysical methods, when we 
reduce the mysteries of the spiritual world to the 
plane of the human understanding, He will give us 
his help. The office of the Spirit is, by effecting a 
change in the moral disposition, to bring the soul to 
an inner, immediate, intuitive, perception of divine 



392 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

things, but it is no part of the Spirit's work to cor- 
rect the notions which the mere logical faculty has 
fashioned. The abstract definitions and statements 
respecting the divine nature and the divine govern- 
ment, that form so large a part of the creeds and 
confessions which have rent the church asunder, be- 
long for the most part to a sphere where the Spirit 
does not claim to operate. 

3. As the doctrine of the Holy Spirit supplies the 
law of religious growth, it affords us the surest 
ground of confidence respecting the ultimate tri- 
umph of divine truth. As the truth wins its first 
access into the soul by a change worked by the Spirit 
in the inner disposition or feeling of man, so we may 
expect that it will spread and prevail by modifica- 
tions of the moral temper of mankind, due just as 
much to the permanent operation of a divine power. 
In other words, the experience of each individual is 
but an epitome of the experience of the larger man, 
of which we all are members, moving by the same 
law to the mark of its high calling. That not only 
individuals, but the race, are moving on in a predes- 
tined path, according to some law of progression, is 
a conception that has taken strong hold of human 
thought. To see on all sides in the external world 
the signs of conformity to law, and to see in the 
long history of the human race signs only of discord 
and confusion ; to believe that the well-ordered 
spheres are balanced by a directing hand, and to be- 
lieve that man alone is left to plunge along help- 
less, and unaided to the darkness that rounds off his 
little life, is a conclusion from which human reason 
instinctively holds back. Rather would it accept 
iron fate than rest in chaos. 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 393 

It has been the bold ahn of a modern school of 
thinkers to reason back from the phenomena of hu- 
man history to the great underlying law which reg- 
ulates its onward march. Vico, Herder, Comte, 
have busied themselves with a problem which must 
always possess a singular fascination for all who 
have an ear for " the still sad music of humanity," 
but thus far, it must be confessed, with results that 
furnish slender hope of any complete solution. Hu- 
man history is an ever-unfolding drama ; if any reg- 
ular movement lies veiled behind its shifting scenes, 
we are ourselves too much a part of it to note it 
with precision. Only the eye that sees the end from 
the beginning can know the significance of the suc- 
cessive acts, and how each part stands related to the 
finished whole. But the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 
while it in no way undertakes to solve the whole 
problem of human destiny, lifts us up into the in- 
spiring confidence of a divine direction of the race. 
Saving us alike from the alternations of a blind, re- 
morseless fate, and the conception of a world with- 
out God and without hope, it supplies the ennobling 
thought of a divine power working in human souls 
without infringing on human freedom, and of a hu- 
man society moving onward in an ordered path to- 
wards perfection. 

The Spirit abiding in the soul of the individual 
believer is at the same time the indwelling law of 
social growth. It is the characteristic of Christ's 
kingdom that its members are not isolated atoms, 
each achieving his destiny solitary and alone ; but 
each is part of a whole, and all are members one of 
another. The same voice that said, "■ I will pray the 
Father, and He will give you another Comforter," 



394 ^-^-^ BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST, 

Uttered the prayer, '' that they all may be one, as 
Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they 
also may be one in us." The essential unity of the 
vine and the branches was the fundamental thought 
pervading his last discourse. There is, indeed, no 
promise of the Spirit save to those abiding in Christ, 
and no assurance of any effectual guidance into the 
truth but with the condition that each separate 
branch should maintain its organic connection with 
the vine. So that the work of the Spirit is not with 
the individual simply, but with the individual as part 
of a spiritual society ; its mission being completed 
not in the salvation of single believers, but in build- 
ing them up into a compact body. Hence the re- 
lation of the Holy Spirit to human society is not to 
be viewed as something incidental and subsidiary, 
but as involving the essential condition of its per- 
fect manifestation. 

Not then, in the secret experiences of our own 
souls, but in the broader aspects and more signifi- 
cant changes of society, may we note the operative 
presence of the Holy Spirit. Not only each individ- 
ual, but the whole household of faith, is acted upon 
and guided and led forward to its final goal by this 
divine working. And when, in the great conflict of 
truth and error, we become at times perplexed and 
discouraged ; when we sadly realize the inefficacy of 
what we can do, and feel ourselves powerless before 
the swelling surge of human misery and wrong, then 
let us take comfort in the thought that agencies of 
which we can make no account are working with 
us, and that avenues of influence which we cannot 
enter, and which we do not even note, all lie wide 
open to that resistless Spirit, which, like the wind, 



THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST 395 

bloweth where it listeth, so that we cannot tell 
whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Least of all 
are periods of mere intellectual doubt or unbelief to 
be viewed as threatening portents in the pathway of 
truth. The intellect does not save, nor can it de- 
stroy. The work of the Spirit is made effectual in 
another way. When the intellect is most clouded 
and bewildered, the heart is often most open to its 
persuasive voice. Mere logical quibbles are forgot- 
ten when the soul is once brought to hunger and 
thirst for the living God. " Lead me to the Rock 
that is higher than I ! " is its despairing cry, when it 
sits comfortless amid the ashes of its empty specula- 
tions. In its secret depths it yearns for communion 
with the invisible world ; it instinctively reaches out 
for a hope that goes beyond the rule of time and 
sense ; and at such times the Comforter comes to it. 
That Comforter comes not to argue, not to confute, 
not to relieve from mere intellectual perplexities, 
but to instill a new life, to abide in human souls, to 
incarnate itself in human society as a permanent 
principle of progress and growth. 

Such, as I understand it, is the promise contained 
in the baptism of the Holy Ghost ; so much of joy 
and comfort for each believer, so much of hope and 
confidence for the whole body. The disciples to 
whom this promise was spoken did not understand 
it. To their dull minds it seemed connected with 
old predictions of times and seasons. The church 
.has never fully understood it. In every age it has 
shown itself hard of heart and slow to believe all 
that lay wrapped up in its mighty assurance. We, 
ourselves, to-day, are far from fully accepting it. 
We are baptized truly with water, but how many of 
us, think you, with the Holy Ghost t 



396 THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

Yet I cannot escape the conviction that in the 
more complete understanding and experience of this 
doctrine lies our hope for the future triumph of the 
faith. The church has had its period of external 
organization, when the zeal of bishops and monks 
carried it with great external success ; it has had 
its period of doctrinal development, when the logic 
of theologians built up imposing doctrinal systems ; 
yet in neither of these periods has been realized the 
promise of the New Jerusalem, that, like a bride 
adorned for her husband, she shall one day come 
down from God out of heaven. She waits for that 
fuller outpouring of the Spirit which shall witness 
itself in far greater works than these. 

Meanwhile, for each of us as individuals, the 
pressing question presented by the text is whether 
we are waiting to have the last prayer of Christ for 
his disciples fulfilled. Remembering the words He 
spoke when on earth, do we receive them with hum- 
ble and obedient hearts .'' Do we seek, by daily self- 
sacrifice and self-surrender, to hold ourselves open 
to the impulses of that Spirit, which, by causing us 
all to abide in the Son, can alone make the world 
believe that the Father has sent Him } For the 
promise is to us and to our children. Ye shall re- 
ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost ! 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND 
THE KINGDOM OF NATURE.^ 



Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of 
heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed which a man took and 
sowed in his field. — Matthew xiii. 31. 

The immediate purpose of this parable was to 
set forth the striking contrast between the small 
beginnings of the kingdom of heaven and its mar- 
velous growth ; but, like all the parables, it con- 
veys another lesson, — a lesson lying beyond its 
immediate aim, — and it is for this that I have se- 
lected it as the text. By the phrase " kingdom of 
heaven," which our Lord so often uses, is intended 
that higher system of spiritual laws and agen- 
cies first fully revealed in Him, and of which He is 
always rjepresented as the head. To disclose the 
.inner nature of this kingdom was the great purpose 
of his teaching. And in the significant figure with 
which the text sets it forth we have the fruitful les- 
son inculcated that though the kingdom of heaven 
was higher than the ordinar}^ methods of nature, it 
yet found in nature its counterpart and illustration. 
This principle is sufficiently familiar, yet it has some 
appUcations which at the present day may be prof- 
itably considered. For what our Lord obviously im- 

1 Written 1880. 



398 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

plies is that the kingdom of heaven, in the whole 
course of its development, finds its counterpart in 
natural processes ; that not alone when we are dealing 
with the simple and primary truths of religion, but 
when we pass on to what are termed the mysteries 
of the faith, to the truths which centre in the life 
and teachings of the Son of Man, we may still trace 
this correspondence between the spiritual and the 
natural, so that when studying the deepest aspects 
of divine truth we may expect to find its aptest 
illustration in the most familiar physical phenom- 
ena, the things that are seen remaining our best 
helps for understanding the things that are unseen. 
Not alone in these simple lessons in which He in- 
structed his disciples in the rudiments of spiritual 
life, but in the latest instructions which He left 
them as their richest legacy, the sayings which have 
remained as the great storehouse of spiritual truth, 
He follows this same habit, and emphasizes the corre- 
spondence between the supersensuous world in which 
we walk by faith and not by sight, and the system 
of natural powers and forces with which we are so 
familiar in our every-day experience. For the most 
vital contact of the soul with its true life He can 
find no better im.age than in eating bread and drink- 
ing wine, and He seizes the vine and its branches 
as the best symbol of his relation to his followers. 
The point on which I wish especially to insist is, that 
this correspondence between the physical and the 
spiritual is carried through all stages and up to the 
highest line of spiritual experience. The two realms 
of nature and of spirit are not presented as antag- 
onistic or as diverging, but as harmonious, and as 
remaining through their entire growth in perfect 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 399 

correspondence. The processes of nature serve 
the great Teacher not simply to set forth the sim- 
ple truths which belong to the beginnings of relig- 
ious experience, as of the sower going forth to sow 
his seed, but they serve Him equally to illustrate 
the most advanced and exalted phases of reHgious 
growth, as when speaking of the Bread of Life. 

What this parable implies is not simply that nat- 
ure, in her manifold and wonderful processes, exem- 
plifies those truths of the invisible world which the 
natural reason may reach, but that nature also illus- 
trates and confirms those laws which revelation has 
brought to light ; that, in short, as we approach what 
is most distinctive and eminent in the new dispen- 
sation, we still tread a path which our common, 
every-day observation may help us to understand. 
And hence we may infer that enlarged study of nat- 
ure and of nature's laws, instead of indisposing us 
to accept the distinctive teachings of revelation, will 
arm those teachings with new arguments and lend 
them more convincing force. For want of attention 
to this fundamental and pervading characteristic 
of our Lord's teacliing, the relations between what 
is termed natural and revealed truth have been 
strangely misunderstood and confused. They have 
been too often looked upon as two distinct realms, 
the methods and laws of the one standing in sharp 
contrast with the methods and. laws of the other; 
and with this misapprehension of their nature the 
conclusion has been. rashly reached, that devotion 
to the one results in indifference to the other, and 
that a mind trained in the observation of natural 
processes is prone to become skeptical with regard 
to spiritual things. It has been hastily assumed 



400 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

that the student of nature deals simply with phe- 
nomena, forgetful of the obvious fact that in all the 
fundamental conceptions which the student of nat- 
ure forms, and from which he is forced to reason, 
there are involved inferences that go beyond phe- 
nomena, and that the whole proud fabric of human 
knowledge rests at last upon assumptions which 
mere science is not competent to make. There can 
be no greater mistake than to suppose that it is the 
exclusive prerogative of religion to make its appeal 
to faith. Science enlists the same faculty. We 
exercise faith in the unseen when we assume the 
existence of matter as much as when we confess 
the presence of supernatural power. It has been, 
if I mistake not, the leading view of those who in 
our time have undertaken to defend revealed truth 
to show that its teachings have not been and can- 
not be contradicted by any of the conclusions of 
modern science. Thus it is claimed that the great 
problems of human life and of human destiny lie 
wholly outside of the limit of scientific search, that 
they belong to a sphere which science cannot enter, 
and that the essential grounds of religious belief 
cannot be affected by any legitimate conclusions 
that science is capable of framing. Confined as she 
is to the phenomena of nature, Science can neither 
affirm nor deny those transcendental truths which 
lie beyond her vision. 

While I would by no means say that the distinc- 
tion here drawn between science and religion is not, 
in the main, a sound one, and that some useful ends 
may be gained by bearing it in mind, I still believe 
it to be a very incomplete account of the relation 
between the two. It is only half the truth to say 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 40 1 

that the truths of religion and the teachings of sci- 
ence are distinct. It is equally true that, while dis- 
tinct, they correspond and are opposite sides of one 
harmonious whole ; so that it is not enough to affirm 
that the conclusions of the one can never contradict 
the affirmations of the other ; we shall fail of the 
whole truth if we do not see that one is the coun- 
terpart of the other, and is its prophetic anticipa- 
tion. The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of 
mustard-seed. In the interests of religion it is high 
time that we abandon this mere defensive attitude, 
and recognize the fact that the natural sciences not 
only are not the foe, but that they are the ally of 
revealed truth. For the conclusion which our text 
unmistakably warrants us in drawing is, that as we 
become more profoundly trained in the methods of 
nature, instead of being turned away from the teach- 
ings of revelation, we shall be more disposed to ac- 
cept them ; that all we learn of nature and her ways 
only qualifies us to comprehend more clearly the in- 
visible ways of that Spirit which we are told finds 
its fittest emblem in the wind that bloweth where it 
listeth. Not only are the established conclusions of 
science not antagonistic to religion, but it is my ear- 
nest conviction that the distinctive methods of sci- 
ence and the new and more adequate conception of 
the physical universe which it has been the work of 
modern science to make familiar rend'er the distinc- 
tive teachings of revelation more easy of compre- 
hension. The deeper .movement of modern science, 
whatever may be said of some of the shallower ed- 
dies, has been in the direction of spiritual truth, and 
the fundamental conceptions on which science now 
insists, the conceptions which give to modern sci- 
26 



402 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

ence its characteristic tone, are conceptions in strik- 
ing analogy with the deeper teachings of the gospel. 

Let us look at this more closely. In the first 
place, the conclusions of science must incline us to 
accept the great primary fact of a revelation itself. 
I know it has been hastily assumed that the reverse 
of this is true, and that the rigorous methods of 
science leave no room for revealed truth. But the 
last result of science is the recognition of the great 
law which the text so impressively sets forth, that 
all things are parts of a great process of growth. 
Of this process man is not only a part, but is the 
crowning result. Hence human nature is a fact, 
— a fact as real, a fact as indubitable, as any that 
can claim our attention. Man is, in truth, the su- 
preme fact that nature presents. No matter how 
he began his career, — no matter how extreme the 
hypothesis we adopt to explain his origin. We may 
trace, if you wish, not only his physical, but also his 
intellectual and even his moral being through a pro- 
cess of evolution reaching back to the fiery cloud 
which, we are told, was once the sole thing floating 
in space; still man, with his present endowments 
and attributes and yearnings, remains just as much 
a fact, and just as much the last supreme result 
which the creation has brought forth. He is the 
marvelous man-child ; in him the whole effort of 
nature is summed up. Our highest inferences from 
nature must be drawn from his constitution, and 
from his convictions and beliefs. 

Now no one can deny that the most characteristic 
thing in man is his appetency for the spiritual and 
the unseen. Creature of time and sense, he is per- 
petually driven by the inexorable needs of his own 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 403 

nature to overleap these barriers. With large dis- 
course of reason, and looking before and after, he 
longs to lift the veil and solve the haunting mystery 
of life and death. But, according to science, such a 
being as man can only be explained as the result of 
a process of development. 

Yet evolution becomes a rational hypothesis only 
when we connect with it the idea of purpose ; nor 
can we conceive of orderly and progressive evolu- 
tion without a directing Intelligence behind it. So 
that man, with his marvelous appetencies, must be 
regarded as created for a purpose, and that purpose 
can be nothing less than communion with something 
above himself. Thus the very constitution of man 
renders a revelation in the highest degree probable. 
Revelation is, in fact, a postulate of human nature, 
when we use the term in any large and adequate 
sense. All experience shows that man is never sat- 
isfied with his present surroundings. He instinct- 
ively puts himself the question, Whence am I, and 
whither shall I go .'^ Hemmed in with mysteries 
which he longs to pierce, he utters the cry, " If a 
man die, shall he live again } " He is as distinctively 
a religious as he is a social animal, and by the whole 
make and strain of his being he is forced to mur- 
mur, " Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." 
Thus human nature, in the course of a strictly nat- 
ural development, and as a result of that develop- 
ment, reaches at last a stage where it cannot be con- 
tent with the conditions of its existence ; when, like 
a child that has come to man's estate, it is no longer 
pleased with childish things, but demands a new en- 
vironment, and yearns for a fuller knowledge, and is 
haunted with the larger problems that stretch out 



404 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURK. 

before it. To borrow the image of the text, the 
grain of mustard-seed has become the greatest 
among herbs. 

Now if we consider what science claims, — that the 
human soul has been brought to this ample growth 
by a normal development ; that these yearnings, in- 
stincts, appetencies, whatever they may be called, 
are inseparable from the advanced stage of prog- 
ress which man has reached ; that they are the 
necessary consequence of a process of moral and 
spiritual evolution, no matter at what point that 
process began, or by what agencies it has been car- 
ried on, — then I claim that the accepted teachings 
of science warrant the inference that these new 
wants and these new capacities will be provided for 
by some new modification of the conditions of its 
existence. Such correlation would be in strict ac- 
cordance with the law of evolution as it has been 
formulated by modern science. It would be simply 
carrying out the principle that the inner growth and 
the external environment must correspond ; and 
hence a revelation of spiritual truth to waiting, ex- 
pecting, yearning man would be the most complete, 
the most impressive, the most beautiful, illustration 
ever given of this law. 

And if, in answer to this, it should be urged that 
revelation, if we regard it thus as a continuation of 
a great system of development, reaching back to the 
very beginning of things, should itself bear the marks 
of progress, I reply without hesitation that such is 
undoubtedly the fact. We have only to revert to 
history to see it. If we glance especially at that 
revelation which asserts itself as the supreme com- 
munication to man from the spiritual world, we find 



KINGDOMS OF HEA VEN AND OF NA TURE. 405 

it marked by nothing more indubitably than by this 
very characteristic of progressive adaptation both to 
human capacities and to human wants. First the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, — 
this is the unmistakable note of revelation from the 
hour when waiting patriarchs wrestled with one 
whom they did not see, on to the full-orbed day 
when man was taught the great lesson that he was 
a son of God. Both the Old and New Testaments 
are vocal with this truth. And nothing in the New 
is more marked and more significant than the con- 
stant assertion of the organic connection between 
the earliest simple communications and the final 
complete manifestation. It has passed into a maxim 
that what was hid in the Old Testament was brought 
to light in the New, and that lawgivers, prophets, 
and apostles, how dimly soever they may have rec- 
ognized the fact, v/ere engaged in one great work, 
and were the ministers of one organic, ever-advan- 
cing revelation. In apostolic phrase, they all drank 
of one spiritual Rock. 

In a natural desire to emphasize the claims of 
revelation it has been too much the habit to draw a 
sharp line of distinction between natural and re- 
vealed religion, and to represent the latter as some- 
thing in its nature exceptional and out of the com- 
mon course. Thus the argument from miracles has 
been assigned a wholly disproportioned prominence 
among Christian evidences. Such reasoning is of 
precisely the same kind as that which leads a sav- 
age to see more evident tokens of the divine pres- 
ence in an eclipse than in the orderly sequence of 
sunrise and sunset. But a better instructed eye 
views in a creation controlled by uniform law, in the 



406 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE, 

harmonious movements of the heavenly bodies, in 
the unfailing succession of seed-time and harvest, 
the most convincing proof of the existence of an 
Intelligent Cause. He is most conscious of the 
presence of God, not in the earthquake nor in the 
whirlwind, but in the still voice that day utters to 
day, and in the silence of night. 

So the most convincing proof of the truth of any 
revelation is to be found not in the fact that it 
stands apart from nature, still less in the fact that 
it seemingly contradicts or suspends any of nature's 
laws, but far more in the fact that it corresponds 
with nature, and that, while going beyond it, while 
disclosing truths which nature does not even sug- 
gest, it yet, in its supreme utterances, conforms to 
the analogy of nature, and follows the method which 
nature in a lower sphere has always adhered to. 
Thus is it, and thus only, that revelation carries 
with it the irresistible conviction that the truths of 
nature and the truths of revelation have proceeded 
from the same source, and illustrate one system of 
things. 

In the very idea of revelation as the communica- 
tion not only of new truth, but of truth above the 
ordinary level of human faculties, there is involved 
not only the possibility but the anterior probability 
that it would be accompanied with unusual phenom- 
ena. These phenomena would be, however, not so 
much an essential part of the revelation as its inci- 
dental concomitant. They would serve not so much 
to demonstrate its truth to those disposed to doubt 
or reject it as to confirm its truth to such as were 
already inclined to accept it. They would have no 
convincing power where faith was not already pres- 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 407 

ent. To unbelief they would seem simply the works 
of one having a devil. 

But we may go still further ; for, in the second 
place, not only do the conceptions rendered familiar 
by modern science prepare us to accept the idea of 
revelation as part of the general and orderly system 
of things, they also render more credible and more 
intelligible what is most distinctive in Christian 
revelation, the doctrine of the manifestation of the 
divine life in human form. In this doctrine, when 
understood in all that it implies, we have that which 
gives Christianity its peculiar stamp, and what I 
now claim is that the conclusions of modern science 
are in striking correspondence with this central 
truth. 

I have just referred to miracles as an incidental 
part of revelation. But in the record of revelation 
the greatest of all miracles is the Son of Man him- 
self. Nothing in the mighty works which no other 
man did, nothing in the marvelous words which 
moved his hearers to cry out that never man spake 
like this man, was after all so wonderful and so im- 
pressive as the person behind them. We instinct- 
ively recognize a reserved strength, an unexhausted 
depth of being, that is more impressive than any 
uttered truths or any mighty deeds. The simple 
life of the man Christ Jesus remains the most sig- 
nal fact that the four Gospels present. 

The more closely and dispassionately we study 
his career, the more deeply shall we be convinced 
of this. I do not refer to Him in any of the mere 
dogmatic or ecclesiastical aspects in which He is 
usually presented, and in which the most significant 
features of his character are so often obscured, but 



408 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

I refer to Him simply as an authentic fact of his- 
tory. Whatever interpretation we may put upon 
Him, whatever degree of obedience we may choose 
to accord to Him, respecting his purely historical 
career, and his actual relation to the course of man's 
spiritual development, there is no room for dispute. 

The most obdurate skeptic must recognize Him 
as the most significant figure which human history 
presents. In Him beyond all question centres the 
most marvelous revolution in the spiritual life of 
which the human race has had any experience, and 
to Him as their source and fountain head reach back 
the most commanding impulses that shape modern 
civilization. 

Yet what must strike us most forcibly, as we study 
this unique career, is its perfect simplicity and nat- 
uralness. Asserting himself as a manifestation in 
human life of the divine nature, Jesus was the most 
intensely human of all religious teachers. Separate 
from men in the sinless purity of his life. He drew 
the outcast and the contemned and the forsaken to 
Him with a might as irresistible as it was gentle 
and mild. He entered into the hidden springs of 
human life, and touched its sympathies and kindled 
its hopes and drew forth its confidence and love as 
could only be done by one who was in all respects 
himself a partaker of human nature. He taught 
transcendent truths, truths that the heart of man 
had never conceived ; but He uttered these truths in 
words that were heard gladly by common people, 
and loved to set them forth in parables and illustra- 
tions drawn from the most familiar incidents of life. 
He did mighty works. He healed the blind, He 
raised the dead, but He constantly declared that bet- 



KINGDOMS OF HEA YEN AND OF NA TURE. 409 

ter and greater than these wonders was the practice 
of the common duties we owe to one another. 

In further illustration of this let us not omit to 
note the significant declarations which Jesus makes 
respecting himself. At the beginning of his min- 
istry He speaks with the authority of a master. He 
calls on his hearers to give up all that they have to 
follow Him, and He calls with a tone that they are 
constrained to recognize and obey. His relation to 
them is external ; He stands above them as their 
Lord and King. So filled are they with the sense 
of his supremacy that they cast their garments in 
the way as they see Him coming. To them He is 
heir of the throne of David ; with eager faith they 
view the near return of the regal rule and splendor 
of the former kingdom. But when, at the close of 
his career. He leads his disciples to the deepest and 
truest and tenderest revelation of himself, his rela- 
tion to them is no longer represented as something 
external and official, but as internal and personal. 
In that wonderful discourse in which He set forth 
most adequately the true nature of his spiritual 
kingdom, He describes, himself under the most sim- 
ple analogies. He is the true vine, of which they 
are the branches ; He is the living bread, which is 
given for them ; He is no longer a mere teacher, 
conveying formal instruction, but his life is blended 
mysteriously with theirs ; He abides in them, and 
they must abide in Him. 

Now who can fail to notice, in all this, the strik- 
ing analogy between these highest teachings of Je- 
sus and some of the latest results of our study of 
the natural world. As physical science has brought 
us to the conclusion that back of all the phenomena 



410 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

of the natural universe there lies veiled an invisible 
universe of forces, and that these forces may ulti- 
mately be reduced to one pervading force, in which 
the essential unity of the physical universe consists, 
and as philosophy has further advanced the rational 
conjecture that this ultimate all-pervading force is 
simply will, so the great Teacher holds up before 
us the spiritual world as a system in the same way 
pervaded by one life, — a life revealed in Him as 
its highest human manifestation, but meant to be 
shared by all those who, by faith, become partakers 
of his nature. When, therefore, we are told that the 
Word, by whom all things were created, was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, — in other words, that the 
eternal reason by which the creation from the be- 
ginning had been shaped, in the fullness of time 
allied itself with human intelligence and with human 
will, — we are not only told nothing that science 
contradicts, but we have hinted to us a law of the 
spiritual world which the laws of the natural world 
confirm, and with which all the last conclusions of 
science stand up in striking and convincing parallel. 
When, in fact, we separate Christianity from its 
more external circumstances, when we strip it of 
the dress it wears as related to a particular age and 
social state, and look at it in its deeper meaning,, 
nothing about it will seem more striking than the 
feature of which I speak It is a larger and fuller 
illustration of what nature everywhere shows. For 
not only does nature, looked at in the largest sense 
as including man, render antecedently probable the 
fact of a revelation, not only does all that it reveals 
of man's spiritual aptitudes and wants prepare us to 
anticipate the time when the human soul shall be 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 4 1 1 

brought into some closer communion with the invis- 
ible world, but all that we learn of the precise pro- 
cesses of nature, of its progressive evolution, of the 
presence of an all-pervading force shaping its phe- 
nomena, still further prepares us for a revelation, 
which, like that brought by the Son of Man, is not 
a mere system of external laws and ordinances, not 
a written code, but an inner spiritual power, dwell- 
ing in man and operating through the human will. 

The last and highest conclusion to which the re- 
searches of physical science have brought us is that 
of a power behind nature, making itself manifest 
through all natural phenomena. The highest, and 
at the same time the simplest, aspect in which Chris- 
tianity is revealed is that of a spiritual force reveal- 
ing itself in human souls. 

That stupendous fact which we term the Incarna- 
tion meant no more than this. It was the dwelling 
in human nature of a divine life and power, the lift- 
ing of the human race to a higher level of spiritual 
experience and action. When Jesus chose for his 
most habitual designation of himself the title of 
'' Son of Man," He hinted this great analogy be- 
tween the natural and the spiritual. For as Son 
of Man He expressed and illustrated the crowning 
result of a human development, since in Him hu- 
manity was first conscious of its divine affinities. 
Even when asserting his most intimate relation with 
the Father He ever described himself as Son of 
Man. And what He claimed for himself He ac- 
corded to his followers. 

We are too much accustomed to look at the man- 
ifestation of God in Christ as something exceptional 
and apart, — as something having no precedent, nor 



4 1 2 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

analogy, nor hint in any recognized modes of the 
divine working. Hence, as often presented, the 
doctrine of the Incarnation perplexes human reason. 
But there is no justification of ^uch a view. Not 
only is the Incarnation in harmony with the method 
of nature, but in Scripture it is uniformly repre- 
sented as lying within the natural course and tend- 
ency of things. It was heralded by a long his- 
torical preparation ; it is held up as the crowning 
result of a connected series of social arid political 
changes ; it came in the fullness of time. Every- 
thing about it shows that it was part of a purpose 
that had long been ripening, — the realization, in 
fact, of a plan formed from the foundation of the 
world. 

While all this does not in the least detract from 
the dignity and authority of the Son of Man, it sets 
Him before us in the great stream of historical phe- 
nomena, and presents Him in his deepest and truest 
aspect, as part and parcel of the whole system of 
things. Such a revelation of God as is given us in 
Christ is therefore, I repeat, precisely the kind of 
revelation which the methods of nature would lead 
us to expect. It was a revelation prepared for, com- 
ing as part and result of an orderly process, and 
making, when it came, all the antecedent steps of 
that process plain. The Son of Man did not sepa- 
rate himself from what had gone before, but claimed 
that He was the complete fulfillment of what the 
law and the prophets had imperfectly taught. And 
not simply in his own career, but in all that He 
taught respecting the nature of that- spiritual king- 
dom which He came to establish, we have this same 
truth continually set forth, that the natural and the 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURK. 4 1 3 

spiritual proceed according to the same method, and 
illustrate the same law. Not more in his earliest 
than in his latest sayings does the great Teacher 
insist on this. Whether He likened the kingdom 
of heaven to a grain of mustard-seed, or described 
the great mystery of the church under the figure of 
a vine, it was the same truth. When we look at 
the external world we are everywhere struck with 
the presence of two great principles to which all the 
varied operations of nature conform. These are the 
law of unity and the law of progress. There runs 
through the material universe an organic connec- 
tion, by virtue of which nothing stands apart and 
alone, but all things are members, one of another ; 
and precisely as we rise in the scale of being this 
organic unity is more apparent. And not less strik- 
ing is the other law, by which all the phenomena 
of nature follow an orderly succession, and tend to 
rise from a less to a more perfect state. As a rule, 
each stage of inorganic or organic being leads to a 
better, so that progress from a lower to a higher has 
been the universal law. 

Now who can fail to note that in all that the Son 
of Man teaches respecting the future destiny of the 
church, which is described as his body, we have 
these two principles continually set forth.? He rep- 
resented organic unity as the fundamental and es- 
sential condition of the new dispensation. This 
unity He set forth under the most expressive fig- 
ures. Not only was He the true vine, but only as 
his hearers became branches of Him could they bear 
fruit. In other words, the new life revealed in Him 
was not sporadic and individual, having its source 
in the personal conviction of each disciple ; it im- 



414 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

plied a real connection with Christ as the head. 
From Him as its source it must all proceed. 

Furthermore, as nature shows everywhere a con- 
stant progress from the lower to the higher, so, the 
Son of Man taught, would the kingdom of heaven be 
governed by the same law. As the new dispensa- 
tion was primarily a new life, in its very nature were 
involved constant progress and growth. The gos- 
pel of Jesus was a proclamation of life ; in Him was 
life, and the great aim of his coming was that men 
might have it more abundantly. And not only in 
the individual, but in the larger scope and move- 
ment of history, would this progress be illustrated. 
It would pervade the world as leaven leavens the loaf; 
it would cover the earth as a mighty tree spreads 
out its branching arms. 

This principle received its complete expression in 
the revelation of the Holy Spirit. In this doctrine, 
the full meaning of which is too much overlooked, 
we have, set forth, the inner and essential relation of 
divine truth both to the individual and to society. 
According to the last teachings of the Son of Man, 
his own personal work on earth was meant simply 
as preparatory. It was only the door to a higher 
and permanent dispensation. Not till after his de- 
parture was the new spiritual power promised which 
should abide in them as a controlling and shaping 
force. This indwelling life and power would sup- 
ply the pervading principle of unity, by virtue of 
which, though many, they should yet always re- 
main one. In the Christian doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost we have the harmony of natural and spiritual 
forces most clearly revealed. Here the methods of 
physical nature and the methods by which the di- 



KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 4 1 5 

Vine Spirit sways and illuminates human souls illus- 
trate each other. They are seen to be parts of one 
system, and we recognize the same power working 
in all things and through all things, and bringing 
all things to pass, whether we consider the lilies of 
the field or study the more subtle workings of man's 
spiritual nature. These two revelations lend each 
other an overwhelming support. As we accept in its 
fullness the Christian doctrine of the Spirit, we shall 
learn to look on all nature not as a mass of inert 
matter, but as everywhere pervaded by a living 
power ; and so, too, as we adopt the modern concep- 
tions of science respecting the force behind phe- 
nomena to which life and organization are due, we 
shall be disposed to accept the teaching of Jesus 
respecting the office and mission of the Holy Ghost. 
My limits allow me to glance only in the most su- 
perficial way at a great and solemn subject. Of 
course the analogy of natural and revealed religion 
is an old and familiar theme. We have all of us 
been taught it in the pages of one of the wisest 
masters of English theology. But the special point 
on which I have been insisting throughout this 
whole discourse is this : that the argument of But- 
ler, instead of being weakened, has been greatly en- 
larged and strengthened by the conclusions of mod- 
ern science. From the obvious course of natural 
phenomena he reasoned to the more obvious doc- 
trines of revelation. What I claim is that the re- 
fined conceptions of nature to which modern sci- 
ence has accustomed us, conceptions unknown in 
Butler's time, have brought out in still more strik- 
ing manner the analogy between the methods of 
nature and the most distinctive and spiritual teach- 



4 1 6 KINGDOMS OF HE A VEN AND OF NA TURE. 

ings of the Son of Man. Modern science rests 
throughout on realistic assumptions. It tends to 
recognize in all nature a pervading unity ; it dis- 
cerns behind phenomena what no phenomena di- 
rectly reveal ; it views the universe as a process 
which only an ideal cause can account for : and in all 
this, I confidently assert, there is a mental habit, a 
mode of conceiving truth, an attitude of mind in 
harmony with the disposition that accepts the high- 
est teachings of revelation. Not only have the great 
postulates of religion not been affected by scientific 
research, but science has brought us to a result 
where these postulates assert themselves with new 
force ; for the methods of operation on which sci- 
ence now insists, methods which have so com- 
pletely transformed our notions of the material 
universe, cannot, in my opinion, be clearly com- 
prehended and cordially accepted without disposing 
a fair and thoughtful mind to accept that fuller -. 
truth of which the church is the pillar and ground. *S 

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mus- 
tard-seed which a man took and sowed in his field. 
Let us learn from this lesson of the great Teacher 
that there is nothing in the study of nature that can 
turn us away from revealed truth. On the contrary, 
the more patiently and reverently we explore the 
processes of nature, the more devoutly shall we bow 
before that wisdom which cometh from above. The 
advance of scientific knowledge has already modified, 
and will continue to modify, many notions which 
men have entertained respecting God and his works, 
but it can never shake the strong foundations of 
that catholic faith which is the same yesterday, to- 
day, and forever. 



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